dBASE provides international support through language drivers, the ASCIISORT and LANGTABLES configuration items, and the SET LDCHECK command. These are ignored in Visual FoxPro.
Visual FoxPro provides extensive international features, including automatic translation of accented characters (ä, é ,ô, and so on). Automatic translation of accented characters can occur in tables, programs, and text files. Visual FoxPro provides flexible support for multiple collation sequences, allowing you to order tables for a specific language.
Visual FoxPro provides its international features through the codepage and COLLATE configuration items and several commands and functions.
When opening dBASE tables, you should issue the command SET CPDIALOG ON in the Command window, so that the Code Page dialog box will appear, allowing you to set the appropriate code page for the table.
For more information, see Chapter 18, Developing International Applications, in the Programmer’s Guide.