>>>>> On Sat, 25 Jan 2003 16:46:32 -0500,
	"James K. Lowden" <jklowden@schemamania.org> said:

> So, is there any reason why our nl_langinfo() doesn't return an 
> "official" name, such as one from 
> http://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets ?

Using IANA name as locale codeset name was once discussed on
bsd-locale mailing list. And I was one who opposed to it.

The reasons are:

1. Portable program shouldn't assume that an IANA charset name can be
  usable as a locale codeset name. Only Linux supports it.
  Rather, we should call an intermediate library function to convert
  an IANA charset name to a locale codeset name.
  So, permitting IANA charset name extends the bad coding style
  influence...

2. Some MIME charsets include "_" or "." in its charset name.
  But a locale codeset name shouldn't include such character to avoid
  ambiguity to parse locale name. Note that all locale name should
  have "language[_TERRITORY[.codeset]]" syntax.

3. As Klaus said, IANA charset name has many aliases for one charset.
  So, using IANA charset name as a locale codeset name increases
  complexisty of programs. Note that there are IANA charsets which
  have multiple aliases without having any prefered MIME name.

4. It's ugry to support a locale name like
	ja_JP.Extended_UNIX_Code_Packed_Format_for_Japanese

But, please note apparently we should support MIME and IANA name
at some levels. What I objected was only to use the IANA name as
codeset name in our locale library.

Probably we should have a library function to to support the converion
between IANA charset names and supported codeset name.

> I'd be very interested to hear what's happening with NetBSD's locale
> support.  I have a direct interest: I maintain a database library in which
> we're improving our locale support, and I can't set up an ISO-8859-15
> environment on my favorite operating system.  

Hmm. Is there any problem other than the GNU iconv thing
(and lacking of intree iconv(3) and working strcoll(3)/strxfrm(3))?
--
soda