Integration Guide

Using Your PayPal Account Profile
Language Encoding Your Data
7
318 September 2008 Website Payments Standard Integration Guide
About Language Encoding for Exchanging Data With PayPal
Computer systems represent human languages in terms of character sets and character
encoding.
Character Sets
A character set is a defined set of individual letters and symbols used in a particular language.
For instance, the ASCII character is commonly used to define the character in written
American English. The Big 5 character is commonly used to define the characters in written
Chinese.
Character Encoding
Character encoding is the way a computer system represents internally the letters and symbols
of a particular character set. Computers use internal representation to store, transmit, and
process data.
Different character encoding schemes define the number of bytes each character requires and
the pattern of on/off bits that identify a particular character. For example, single-byte encoding
schemes, such as ANSI and extended ASCII, allocate one byte for each character or symbol in
character set for Western European languages. Other encoding schemes, such as Unicode and
UTF-8, allocate several bytes for each character in their character sets.
Changing Your Default Language Encoding
Your Language Encoding preferences let you can control which language and encoding
scheme is used to exchange data between your website and PayPal. When you sign up for a
PayPal account, the system determines your default language and encoding based on your
country of origin. For example, if you sign up with a French postal address, your language and
encoding are set for Western European languages.
You must set your language encoding preferences to match the language and encoding that
your website uses. Otherwise, data cannot be exchanged with PayPal. Generally, the default
selected by PayPal is appropriate. In some cases, particularly in Asian countries or with certain
operating systems, the language and/or encoding may not match those used by your website.
You can set these language encoding preferences.
z Your website’s language – Set the character set used on your website, such as Western
European, Japanese, or Russian
z Encoding – Set the character encoding used on your website, such as UTF-8, EUC-JP, or
KOI8-R.
N OTE: For a complete list of supported character encodings, see ““Setting the Character
Set – charset” on page 339.
Changing Your Default Website Language
To change your website language: