From owner-freebsd-ports Fri Feb 15 2:56:42 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from alpha.dante.org.uk (alpha.dante.org.uk [193.63.211.19]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 95F3A37B400 for ; Fri, 15 Feb 2002 02:56:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from root by alpha.dante.org.uk with local (Exim 3.12 #4) id 16bg2f-0007Hb-00 for freebsd-ports@freebsd.org; Fri, 15 Feb 2002 10:56:37 +0000 Received: from pi.dante.org.uk ([193.63.211.70] helo=dante.org.uk) by alpha.dante.org.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #4) id 16bfjD-000734-00; Fri, 15 Feb 2002 10:36:31 +0000 Message-ID: <3C6CE4AD.6306584F@dante.org.uk> Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 10:36:30 +0000 From: Konstantin Chuguev Organization: Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe Ltd. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: ru, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: iconv port: plea for take-over Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Hello All, [I am not subscribed to the list anymore, so please reply directly] The iconv library has got some serious bugs, but has not been upgraded for ages. Apart from being buggy, it lacks some modern charsets (such as iso8859-16), which a year ago was the only reason why GNOME library refused to work with it. (Not that I want libiconv to be thrown away, I just can see how painful it is for port developers to patch libiconv to libgiconv and many packages to use a non-standard name beginning with "g"). I am really sorry, but being the only developer I did not have enough time to make new versions. Finally, it happened that I do not have any FreeBSD systems around me. In my opinion, iconv still has some advantages compared to GNU libiconv: * BSD-style license; * use of BSD-specific functions (portability to non-BSD systems was not a goal); * modularity as well to some extent. As far as I remember, a port of iconv was created for NetBSD as well, based on the same source with minor patches. Some people were interested in including [part of] iconv into the kernel, to be used by various filesystems. I still think it would be a good idea, although I cannot help much there. So, if anybody wants to help and improve the library, please take it over. All I am asking for is my name retained in the files created by me :-) Take the last version here: http://www.dante.net/staff/konstantin/FreeBSD/iconv/ Thanks, Konstantin. -- * * Konstantin Chuguev Francis House * * Applications Engineer 112 Hills Road * Tel: +44 1223 302992 Cambridge CB2 1PQ D A N T E To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message