[9fans] slightly OT: tcs or iconv

[9fans] slightly OT: tcs or iconv

[Robert Raschke]

Hi,

I am currently investigating how best to cope with multiple character
sets.  This is on Windows, but I am loathe to get into the what look
like exceedingly murky waters of MS character set handling.

Since I use Plan 9 at home, I am familiar with the wonderful
simplicity of tcs, so I am wondering, has anybody got some thoughts on
the benefits of tcs over iconv?  I feel inclined to go with tcs
because I can understand what it is doing by reading the code (and I
feel confident that I can get it built on Windows).  With iconv this
is a lot harder (my brain is not big enough for all the gnuisms) and I
would stick to using it as a black box.

Thanks for any opinions,
Robby

--
r dot raschke at tombob dot com

Re: [9fans] slightly OT: tcs or iconv

[Russ Cox]

> Since I use Plan 9 at home, I am familiar with the wonderful
> simplicity of tcs, so I am wondering, has anybody got some thoughts on
> the benefits of tcs over iconv?  I feel inclined to go with tcs
> because I can understand what it is doing by reading the code (and I
> feel confident that I can get it built on Windows).  With iconv this
> is a lot harder (my brain is not big enough for all the gnuisms) and I
> would stick to using it as a black box.

if tcs works for you and iconv scares you, the choice is simple.

russ

Re: [9fans] slightly OT: tcs or iconv

[Robert Raschke]

Russ wrote:
> if tcs works for you and iconv scares you, the choice is simple.

:-)

Yeah, I guess it sometimes just takes an outside voice to clear the
head.

Getting bombarded by requests to stick to "standards" (XML, anyone?)
day in, day out sure helps to cloud ones judgement.

Thanks for the brevity,
Robby

--
r dot raschke at tombob dot com

[9fans] Re: slightly OT: tcs or iconv

[Darren Bane]

Robert Raschke <rrplan9@tombob.com> wrote:

!snip!

> I feel inclined to go with tcs
> because I can understand what it is doing by reading the code (and I
> feel confident that I can get it built on Windows).

If you run into trouble here, don't forget that tcs comes as part of
Inferno too, which already runs on Windows.

And to echo a later message of yours, "standards" and "best
practices" are at the root of some of the worst designs I've seen.

!snip!
-- 
Darren Bane