The short description is encoded as ISO-8859-15. The commit is encoded as UTF-8. <p> The short description is obtained from a "make -V COMMENT". <p> The commit messages arrives via an XML file encoded with ISO-8859-1. <h2>Test iconv output</h2> <?php $str = "Full-screen task manager similar to Exposé(tm)"; echo "<p>{$str}</p>\n"; echo "<p>" . iconv("ISO-8859-15", "UTF-8", $str) . "</p>\n"; echo "<p>" . htmlentities($str) . "</p>\n"; $str = "Antônio Carlos Venâncio Júnior"; echo "<p>{$str}</p>\n"; echo "<p>" . iconv("ISO-8859-1", "UTF-8", $str) . "</p>\n"; echo "<p>" . htmlentities($str) . "</p>\n"; $Commit = new Commit($db); $Commit->FetchByMessageId('*****@*****.**'); echo "<pre>{$Commit->commit_description}</pre>\n"; $Port = new Port($db); $Port->Fetch('deskutils', 'kompose'); echo "<pre>{$Port->short_description}</pre>\n"; echo "<pre>" . iconv("ISO-8859-15", "UTF-8", $Port->short_description) . "</pre>\n"; ?> The end </body> </head>