Problem:
Some Spotfire visualizations with non-English language data (for example, Chinese), imported using Information Links, can be displayed incorrectly as garbled text.
Solution:
While this is not necessary to do in most Spotfire environments, it might be necessary to explicitly define UTF-8 as character enconding for some Information Designer data sources. This can be done by modifying Information Services Java VM settings using steps described in this article:
https://support.tibco.com/s/article/Unable-to-launch-Information-Designer-from-Spotfire-Analyst
As stated in the article, configuration.xml file needs to be edited and the following custom settings need to be added within <information-services> tag:
<information-services>
<external-process>
<jvm-opts>
<argument>-Dfile.encoding=utf-8</argument>
<argument>-Dsun.jnu.encoding=utf-8</argument>
</jvm-opts>
</external-process>
</information-services>
Note that you'll need to export configuration.xml file first, using "config export-config" command, and then import it back, after making this change, using "config import-config" command.