R help - Mar 2012 - Transferring a dataset from WINXP to Mac - problems with umlauts

Dear R-Help,

is it possible to correctly display umlauts in a dataset, which has been created
under WINXP, on a Mac-system?

This is the problem:
I have imported a German MS-Access database into R 2.14.1 by using RODBC on a
WINXP-System. It runs with a Latin-1 encoding (codepage 1252). However, most of
the work is done with a Mac (UTF-8 encoding) and the R-dataset has been
transferred to the MAC.  Here, umlauts are displayed as \x.. (i.e. \xe4 instead
of ?). If I set the locale to
Sys.setlocale(locale="de_DE.ISO8859-15"), umlauts are displayed as
black diamonds.

Since it is awkward to enter \x-codes when I work with the dataset, I would
rather use the umlauts. Is there a way?

Thanks, FB

On a Mac running with a US locale, when I first type <option>-u (in  
Mail.app that shows a highlighted "naked umlaut)  and then type 'u'
I
get:

?
Similarly with opt-u, 'a'

?

-- 
David.
On Mar 28, 2012, at 7:15 AM, Frank Bloos wrote:
> Dear R-Help,
>
> is it possible to correctly display umlauts in a dataset, which has  
> been created under WINXP, on a Mac-system?
>
> This is the problem:
> I have imported a German MS-Access database into R 2.14.1 by using  
> RODBC on a WINXP-System. It runs with a Latin-1 encoding (codepage  
> 1252). However, most of the work is done with a Mac (UTF-8 encoding)  
> and the R-dataset has been transferred to the MAC.  Here, umlauts  
> are displayed as \x.. (i.e. \xe4 instead of ?). If I set the locale  
> to Sys.setlocale(locale="de_DE.ISO8859-15"), umlauts are
displayed
> as black diamonds.
>
> Since it is awkward to enter \x-codes when I work with the dataset,  
> I would rather use the umlauts. Is there a way?
>
> Thanks, FB
>
> ______________________________________________
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT