MHonArc Users,
After taking the time to look at the patch contributed by
rune(_dot_)froysa(_at_)usit(_dot_)uio(_dot_)no for 1522 support, I finally got
motivated
to incorporate 1522 support into mhonarc.
I'd like to thank Rune for the patch, but unfortunately the quick
fix was inadequate for proper (generic) 1522 support in mhonarc. The
support for 1522 is a little more complicated, and the complications
were the main reasons I did not develop 1522 support in the past.
Certain design limitations in mhonarc made proper 1522 support more
difficult than needed.
But now, I have the base code working. A couple of important
items to note are the following:
o A change in the way data is stored in the database
file must be changed. The change is minor, and I
plan on writing a database patch program to upgrade
existing database files.
o 1522 processing has a conflict with the string clipping
capability in resource variables (eg "$SUBJECTNA:72$").
The second issue we will have to live with. Those interested
on the specifics, I can elaborate at a later time. BTW, I plan
to make 1522 processing in mhonarc will be optional.
So now, I have been on the hunt for information on various standard
character sets so I can develop charset converters to hook into
mhonarc (yes, mhonarc will have support for users to hook in their
own converters). The us-ascii and iso-8859-1 charsets are fairly
straight-forward. It is the others that will require some busy work.
Since ISO does not publish the standards publicly, I have found some
difficulty finding information on the other iso-8859 charsets. I did
find a german document on the iso-8859-[1-9] charsets, and should be
able to gleam the appropriate information for writing converters for
(some of the) iso-8859 charsets.
If anyone is interested in helping out in the task of writing
converters, I welcome it. Basically, within mhonarc, a
converter will be called as follows:
$return_data = &converter($data, $charset)
The first argument is the decoded 1522 data (ie. raw data), the
second argument is the charset specfied (only useful if one
registers a single converter for multiple charsets).
Since mhonarc is converting to html, the return data should be
includable wihtin html. Hence, many charset converters will need
to translate the data into the appropriate entity references or
to something understandable by html browsers. Converters may also
translate to ascii if there is no direct html/sgml representation
for the charset.
Any help anyone can provide will help speed up the process
for a new release of mhonarc with 1522 support.
--ewh
----
Earl Hood | ISOGEN INTERNATIONAL CORP
ehood(_at_)isogen(_dot_)com | dba Highland Consulting
Phone: 214-953-0004 x127 | 2200 North Lamar #230
FAX: 214-953-3152 | Dallas, TX 75202
