# Configuring P4V for Unicode mode servers

The first time you connect to a Unicode-mode server, P4V requires you to choose a character set. If you are connecting to a Unicode mode server, it is vital to configure this setting correctly to ensure that files are transferred properly between your client machine and the Perforce server. If you are unsure which setting to choose, consult your Perforce administrator.

Perforce supports several variants of the UTF-16 character set, because the Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms differ in their handling of UTF-16 encoding, specifically, in the ordering of multibyte characters and the inclusion of a byte order marker (BOM) in the file header. The standard UTF-16 setting — utf16 — is configured according to the typical defaults for your processor and is the recommended setting, unless you are certain that your client computer requires different byte-order/BOM settings.

For full details about configuring client and server computer to handle Unicode environments and files, refer to the Internationalization Notes, available from http://www.perforce.com/perforce/technical.html