Character Set in CF for German Umlaut Characters

Do you have a small example that reproduces the issue? I tried a test page w/CF9, FF and SQL Server 2005 and unfortunately .. couldn't reproduce the issue you described. Even without setting the charset explicitly.

I'm not quite clear on how the problem is manifesting itself. ie Are the characters NOT being saved correctly to the db =OR= are the characters saved correctly in the db, but when displayed in HTML form fields they're incorrect?

Just in the general area of encoding problems, other settings you might check:

- Do your Application files use SetEncoding(...) at all?
- If the problem is characters not being stored correctly in the db, check your DSN settings. Does it enable the String Format setting?

Sometimes if I place the umlaut character inside a cfinput or cftextarea, etc. all I get is the ä instead of ä.

Place how? Do you mean you copy+paste, and the pasted values are incorrect? Honestly I don't use cfinput/cftextarea much, but created a test form (see below) and tested with: cfinput, cftextarea, cftextarea richtext=true" and didn't observe any problems. (That's without changing the page encoding). I know you mentioned cfinput's too, but ... could it be a problem with the underlying FCKEditor?

http://ckeditor.com/forums/Support/FCK-UTF-8-encoding-FCKeditor-not-working-special-charac
http://dev.ckeditor.com/ticket/490


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SQL: (Default Collation: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS)

CREATE TABLE testTable
(
id int identity
, qn_nm nvarchar(255) NOT NULL
, createdDate datetime default(getDate())
)

Test characters:
www.columbia.edu/~fdc/utf8/

Test Form:

<cfset dsn = "MyDataSourceName">

<cfparam name="FORM.idList" default="" />

<cfif structKeyExists(FORM, "newValue")>
      
      <!--- TEST: Add new record --->
      <cfif len(trim(FORM.newValue))>
            <cfquery name="qTest" datasource="#dsn#">
                  INSERT INTO TestTable( qn_nm )
                  VALUES (
                        <cfqueryparam value="#FORM.newValue#" cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" />
                  )
            </cfquery>
      </cfif>
      
      <!--- TEST: Update existing records --->
      <cfloop list="#FORM.idList#" index="VARIABLES.id">
            <cfquery name="qTest" datasource="#dsn#">
                  UPDATE       TestTable
                  SET       qn_nm = <cfqueryparam value="#FORM['updateValue_'& VARIABLES.ID]#" cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" />
                  WHERE   ID = <cfqueryparam value="#VARIABLES.ID#" cfsqltype="cf_sql_integer" />
            </cfquery>
      </cfloop>
</cfif>

<!--- get existing records --->
<cfquery name="qTest" datasource="#dsn#">
      SELECT ID, CreatedDate, qn_nm
      FROM   testTable
      ORDER BY ID DESC
</cfquery>

<!--- TEST: Edit values --->
<cfform method="post">
      New: <cfinput type="text" name="newValue"/> <br/>
      Update: <br/>
      <cfoutput query="qTest">
            [#currentRow#] <input type="hidden" name="idList" value="#ID#" />
            <cfinput type="text" name="updateValue_#ID#" value="#qTest.qn_nm#" size="50" /><br />
      </cfoutput>
      <input type="submit" />
</cfform>

<!--- TEST: DISPLAY as text --->
<cfquery name="qTest" datasource="#dsn#">
      SELECT ID, CreatedDate, qn_nm
      FROM   testTable
      ORDER BY ID DESC
</cfquery>
<cfoutput query="qTest">
      #ID# | #qn_nm#<br/>
</cfoutput>