Re: Encoding support policy

On 19 Aug 2005, at 04:11, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
>   We need a clear policy about which charset names and which encodings
> we support. The current charset.cfg lists acceptable names and check
> takes care that if the Encode installation support the encoding, the
> names will be recognized. The current list appears to be a bit random
> though we probably need at least an exclusion list since we don't want
> people to use encodings like "guess" which are supported by Encode.

I don't think it's random, but I don't know that we have any kind of  
process to update it other than when we get a request to do so and  
find out that the charset (or name) is supported.

>  We support any encoding the
> system's Encode installation does support and for which we know a
> proper Encode alias which is not specifically excluded from the list
> of encodings. We get those alias definitions from I18N::Charset and
> for charset names that are not registered with IANA we emit a warning,
> possibly including a hint which encoding should be used instead.

That sounds reasonable. do you know how much changes that procedure  
would cause?

> This will probably also require keeping track of encodings
> which Encode does not support by default, e.g. gb18030 requires that
> Encode::HanExtra is installed, so we would need a list for v.w3.org
> to ensure that it supports the modules we want to support.

Encode::HanExtra will not be necessary, in 5.8 Encode::TW and  
Encode::CN seem to cover them, according to Encode::HanExtra's doc.  
But we would have to keep on eye on others, for instance  
Encode::Arabic, Encode::JIS2K, Encode::IBM

-- 
olivier

Received on Friday, 2 September 2005 09:09:43 UTC