[% setvar title Getting Data Into Unicode Is Not Our Problem %]
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<a name='TITLE'></a><h1>TITLE</h1>
<p>Getting Data Into Unicode Is Not Our Problem</p>
<a name='VERSION'></a><h1>VERSION</h1>
<pre>  Maintainer: Simon Cozens &lt;<a href='mailto:simon@brecon.co.uk'>simon@brecon.co.uk</a>&gt;
  Date: 25 Sep 2000
  Mailing List: <a href='mailto:perl6-internals@perl.org'>perl6-internals@perl.org</a>
  Number: 296
  Version: 1
  Status: Developing</pre>
<a name='ABSTRACT'></a><h1>ABSTRACT</h1>
<p>Forget <code>iconv</code>, <code>ICU</code>, <code>Encode</code>, <code>tcs</code> and all that. Rule them out
of scope, and we don't have to worry about them.</p>
<a name='DESCRIPTION'></a><h1>DESCRIPTION</h1>
<p>One thing we've been pushing ahead with for 5.7.0 is character encoding
translation support. Now, there are a bunch of libraries out there which
already do this, and I mentioned some of them in the abstract. Choosing
one of them is going to be problematic, because there'll always be users
that won't have it; writing our own is Not Fun.</p>
<p>We can sidestep the whole issue by not even claiming to provide any
character encoding support. Let's say that we're happy to convert
ISO8859-1 into Unicode, since that's relatively trivial, but if the
user's got anything more exotic, they have to provide us with Unicode
themselves through the line discipline method.</p>
<p>This means that they can grab, from CP6AN or elsewhere, modules which
support the conversion libraries they have currently installed, or, if
they don't have any, which perform the conversions that they want. (Such
as the nascent <code>Encode</code> module.)</p>
<p>This is economical for us, since we don't have to worry about encoding
support; it's economical for the end user, since they can choose the
library which best fits their needs.</p>
<a name='IMPLEMENTATION'></a><h1>IMPLEMENTATION</h1>
<p>See RFC 311: Line Disciplines.</p>
<a name='REFERENCES'></a><h1>REFERENCES</h1>
<p>The <code>Encode</code> module in bleadperl</p>
<p>RFC 311: Line Disciplines</p>
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