Hi, At Fri, 21 Dec 2001 18:06:06 +0000, Markus Kuhn wrote:
> Another example for why using "nl_langinfo(CODESET)" or "locale charmap" > is far better than looking at the environment variables with obscure > rules: > > On many systems, the locale "de_DE" (and others) will soon have to > change the charmap from "ISO-8859-1" to "ISO-8859-15". At least 12 of > the pre-euro locales will become obsolete in 11 days from now (people on > the continent received already their first euro coins this week to > practice). The mapping between locale names and encodings should really > be left to where it belongs, namely the C library. It is true that softwares should use nl_langinfo(CODESET) as far as possible than looking at the environment variables. However, there are platforms which don't support nl_langinfo() such as FreeBSD. Thus, portable softwares should check environment variables when nl_langinfo() is not available, though this method can result in wrong encoding. This is a discussion from softwares' viewpoint. >From users' viewpoint, to declare encoding more clearly, it is a good idea to define LANG variable including codeset part. Especially for Euro-migrating countries. --- Tomohiro KUBOTA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/ "Introduction to I18N" http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n/ -- Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
