We have a DE85 app that writes text files using textout / textoutln on a MS2012 server.

Up until 2024-10-30 the files created were UTF-8 format.
For some unknown reason as from 2024-10-31 the files are ANSI format.
Nothing was changed on the DE85 app
According to server hosting support no changes to Server or AD system locale changes were made (and none can be seen)

If the ANSI format files created are opened in Notepad and edited and saved then the format is UTF-8 so there does not appear to be anything changed in the server default for text file format.

Is there any way to force DE8.5 Textout to UTF-8 format?

From 7.2.2 help
RDRRDAAA.INI 

ANSI_CHARSET

ApplicationCharset= 0
DEFAULT_CHARSET
ApplicationCharset=1

Default for DE8.5 is ApplicationCharset= 0

Changing setting to ApplicationCharset=1 does not make a difference to text file output - still ANSI 

Not sure if this setting is relevant for text file output?

This is 100% a windows problem.

Is this app running on the server or on a client?

If it is not running on the server, the server is not the culprit. This problem is on the Windows where the app is running.

The character set you are looking into here was created to handle Greek/SImplified Chineese etc. and to be honest it has hardly ever been used. It It exploit the fact that you can set up a different 8 bit character set in windows but it just complicate things if you don't really need it.

Most likely the problem is that someone has played with the system local.

This is a bleeding mess if you get dragged into it. Our approach and recommendation is that one should never play with server settings or things like this as it is more likely to cause problems than fix them.

Our goal is to deliver software that run on default software/hardware without any of this wizardry needed or recommended.

As noted in the initial post the server system locale settings were checked and nothing has changed.

User logon is via Published Remote App with Active directory credentials.

The system locale settings for the user session are set according to the server system locale.

What is weirder is that for the same user logon two different processes yield different results.

User logs in and runs procedure A and gets an ANSI file.

In the same session procedure B delivers a UTF-8 file.

Both text files are created with a DQL using textout / textoutln

I agree it's definitely due to some issue on the server. Unfortunately that just makes it more complicated as the server is a VM managed by a third party and they seldom volunteer any information of any changes.

Hi, Sam! Very useful case! Thx. May be A and B are different a bit ? What about text format of C which is the combination of A and B ? Thank You.