Arabic Form Input - Help!

Hello, I am writing software which uses MySQL as a backend. I need to accept Arabic form input, store it in MySQL, and use it later. I don't believe MySQL supports Unicode except in BLOB column types, so I want to convert it to NCR (numeric character html entities). After looking at iconv() and recode(), I think I need to use mb_encode_numericentity(). Some questions: 1) Does that sound right? Accept Arabic form input and then use mb_encode_numericentity() to convert it to html character entities and then store in db? 2) Does anyone know where I can get a conversion map for Arabic text? I'm still not sure what the encoding is used by browsers to submit Arabic, iso-8859-6 I am assuming. 3) Any other words of advice? :) Thank you for any help! I have spent a lot of time poring over manuals and technical papers to learn this i18n stuff but I am stuck with the best way to implement this in a web application I need to finish (a non-commercial web project). Thank you! anarchocipher@yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Greetings - Send FREE e-cards for every occasion! http://greetings.yahoo.com