Re: [xml] Adding a build/configure *option* to use ICU converters

[Mark Rowe <mrowe apple com>]

On 26/09/2007, at 18:33, Daniel Veillard wrote:

> I don't see why your patch shouldn't be applied and yes adding the  
> option
> on configure would be sensible (as long as it's off by default).  
> Also I would
> really prefer if Unixes didn't switched it on when distributed as  
> part of
> the OS to maintain a predictable behaviour on all similar platforms.

I'm not sure I understand this argument.  Other than the character  
sets supported by the library, there should be zero difference between  
functionality when using ICU or iconv.  The character sets available  
to iconv appears to be very platform-dependent as well.  A comparison  
of two Debian machines I have at hand shows that one has over 1150  
encoding aliases available to iconv, while the other only has 950.  On  
two Macs that I have in front of me running different versions of Mac  
OS X, one has 460 and the other 400.

Could you clarify what you mean by this?  I'm not advocating that ICU  
be the default, I'm just curious why you feel vendors should not use  
it if it is present.

Thanks,

Mark Rowe