1          LIBCHARSET - portable character set determination library
2
3This library provides a function which determines the character set / encoding
4of text in the currently selected locale (the LC_CTYPE locale facet).
5
6It is useful for portable programs which need to process text in other
7encodings and locales than the currently selected one. Possible uses:
8
9  * Use of Unicode in POSIX compliant applications.
10  * Conversion of text between the current locale's encoding and UTF-8 (or
11    any other given encoding).
12  * Mail agents.
13
14In theory, this would be very simple: The Single Unix Specification (SUSV2)
15provides the nl_langinfo function, in such a way that
16
17                  nl_langinfo (CODESET)
18
19returns the encoding name. But the nl_langinfo function still does not exist
20on some systems, and on those where it exists it returns unstandardized
21variations of the encoding names, like (on Solaris) "PCK" for "Shift_JIS".
22
23This library fixes these flaws and provides a function
24
25       const char * locale_charset (void);
26
27It determines the current locale's character encoding, and canonicalizes it
28into one of the canonical names listed in config.charset. The result must
29not be freed; it is statically allocated. If the canonical name cannot be
30determined, the result is a non-canonical name.
31
32
33Installation:
34
35As usual for GNU packages:
36
37    $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
38    $ make
39    $ make install
40
41
42This library is used in
43  GNU sh-utils, fileutils, textutils
44  GNU gettext
45  GNU clisp
46
47
48To integrate this library into your package:
49See file INTEGRATE.
50
51
52Distribution:
53    The libcharset directory of
54    ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libiconv/libiconv-1.8.tar.gz
55
56Homepage:
57    http://www.haible.de/bruno/packages-libcharset.html
58
59
60Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org>
61