When you see characters converted to ???, it generally means that they cannot be represented in the code page (character encoding) that SPSS is running in. This is determined by the LOCALE setting in SPSS, and you can control this. In Access, characters are stored in Unicode, and they have to be converted to a Windows code page in order for SPSS to use them. This is automatic, but it only works if you have SPSS running in the right locale.
By default, SPSS runs in the Windows (I’m assuming that you are on Windows) user locale.
You can check your current SPSS locale by executing
SHOW LOCALE.
The locale is actually a combination of a country, language, and character encoding.
If you are not in an Arabic locale, you can put SPSS into this by executing
SET LOCALE=’arabic’.
This sets you in locale Arabic_Saudi Arabia.1256. (It does not make SPSS show its output in Arabic, though. There is no Arabic version of SPSS.) The important part for character handling is the 1256, which refers to the Arabic code page in Windows.
(You can specify the country, too, using the same style, but it does not matter for character handling.)
You need to have the Windows support for Arabic locales installed, which newer Windows versions tend to do anyway, but if the SET LOCALE command fails, check your Windows Control Panel Regional and Language Options (terminology varies depending on Windows version) and install this support if it is not present.
Newer versions of SPSS generally do better with locale-specific character handling than older ones, but this support has been in the product for a while.
You may also need to change the fonts SPSS is using once you get the text in. Also, some parts of SPSS do not do a good job of displaying right-to-left text. We’re working on that.
HTH,
Jon Peck
________________________________
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Ramzan Afzal
Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 4:59 AM
To:
[hidden email]
Subject: [SPSSX-L] Arabic Text
Dear All,
I am facing a problem of importing some text variables in ACCESS tables with Arabic text to SPSS. Whenever SPSS reads and imports Arabic text it prints "???????????".
Any help or solution will be highly appreciated.
Regards
Ramzan
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