| ICONV - Charset Conversion Library. Version 1.0 |
| ----------------------------------------------- |
| |
| This distribution contains the library (libiconv.a and .so) for |
| conversion between various charsets (character encoding schemes) |
| and the command line utility (iconv). |
| |
| Syntax of the library functions (iconv_open, iconv, iconv_close) |
| and the utility is described in the man pages. |
| |
| Features of the library: |
| - small size: the actual conversion methods are located |
| in dynamically loaded shared modules, representing |
| either a character encoding scheme (CES), or a coded |
| character set (CCS); |
| - open module API: adding new modules (both CESs and |
| CCSs) is easy. Although the API has not been documented, |
| it is rather simple to be figured out from the sources; |
| - BSD-style copyright; |
| - POSIX compliance of iconv_open, iconv and iconv_close |
| functions; |
| - support for aliases for charset names via UNIX symbolic |
| links; |
| - ISO/IEC 10646 conformance of the internal representation |
| of characters; conversion is always done in two steps: |
| (1) a sequence of zero or more bytes from input buffer |
| coded in the source charset is converted to exactly one |
| valid UCS-4 character and (2) the UCS-4 character is |
| converted to a sequence of zero or more bytes in |
| the target charset to the output buffer; |
| - standard sources of CCS tables: all C source files of |
| the tables have been generated by a Perl script from |
| the Unicode and RFC1345 charset mapping tables before |
| being included to the package. |
| |
| Konstantin Chuguev |
| <Konstantin.Chuguev@dante.org.uk> |
| September 2000. |