[bug-gnu-libiconv] Updating iconv tables

[Jim Breen]

Greetings

I have struck a problem with missing mappings in
iconv in several Linux distros. The problem has
arisen initially with the Unicode/JIS X 0213 codepoint
㈱ (i.e. (株)), but is sure crop up with others.

An entry for ㈱ went into JMdict/EDICT Japanese dictionary
recently. I maintain the source for those files in
EUC-JP and distribute the text formats (EDICT/EDICT2)
in EUC-JP and the XML format (JMdict) in UTF8. I
convert to UTF8 using the iconv commandline utility
(on a Solaris system). For ㈱ the EUC (ADEA) converts
to the UTF8 version of U+3231 fine. That EUC-JP codepoint
is in JIS X 0213, which is a sort-of superset of the main
JIS X 0208 standard.

The WWWJDIC dictionary servers also use EUC-JP internally,
but if a user has selected UTF8 operation will convert
input and display UTF8<->EUC on the fly using iconv().
This works fine on the Monash WWW server (also Solaris).

The trouble occurs on Linux systems. When people have
gone to convert the EDICT file to UTF8 for other
systems, the iconv utility simply dies on that
character, and the WWWJDIC servers that run on Linux,
which is most of them apart from Monash, fail to convert
㈱ properly.

The problem, I conclude, is with the compiled-in tables
in iconv in the Linux distros. It seems Sun has gone to
the trouble of keeping theirs up-to-date, but the standard
distros haven't.

I'm guessing this is a problem with the standard Gnu
version of iconv, or libiconv to be precise.

Any idea when it will be updated? Is it actually fixed, but
admins need to update their versions?

Hoping for some feedback.

Cheers

Jim

--
Jim Breen
Honorary Senior Research Fellow
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/



-- 
Jim Breen
Honorary Senior Research Fellow
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/