Hello,

> But when I get the data from the DB with my program I want to process
> them in Windows-1252 again. So, if I use encode with windows-1252 I get
> an error
>
> mydata.encode("windows-1252")

Although an encoding of the data from the DB is UTF-8, ruby doesn't
know the encoding, so you must do tell ruby the encoding before
encoding to Windows-1252.

  # tell ruby the encoding
  mydata.force_encoding( "UTF-8" )
  # encode to windows-1252
  mydata.encode( "windows-1252" )

Regards,
-- 
nobuoka