Re: broken tables-big.in pango/modules/basic/

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

suzukis@flavor1.ipc.hiroshima-u.ac.jp writes:

> Dear Mr. Taylor,
> 
> >I've updated all of the tables to the data from the Unicode-3.0
> >CD. (There do not seem to any updates to the mappings on
> >unicode.org.) I've also taken the opportunity to add
> >iso-8859-{10,13,14,15} and koi8-r to the mapping tables.
> 
> Could you give us the list of mapping files which you used
> to generate tables-big.i etc?

 Mappings/ISO8859/8859-(\d+).TXT => iso-8859-\1
 Mappings/EASTASIA/GB/GB2312.TXT => gb-2312
 Mappings/EASTASIA/JIS/JIS0208.TXT => jis-0208
 Mappings/EASTASIA/KSC/KSC5601.TXT => ksc-5601
 Mappings/VENDORS/MISC/KOI8-R.TXT => koi8-r

The TIS mapping I used I basically created myself; I suppose I could
check that one in.

> As you noticed in tools/maps/README, the official mapping files
> provided by Unicode Org. are NOT freely redistributable -
> map files says:
> 
> #  Recipient is granted the right to make copies in any form for
> #  internal distribution and to freely use the information supplied
> #  in the creation of products supporting Unicode.  Unicode, Inc.
> #  specifically excludes the right to re-distribute this file directly
> #  to third parties or other organizations whether for profit or not.
> 
> Now I'm trying to write a Makefile which automatically downloads
> the map files from the web server Unicode Org. by executing wget.
> 
> But I feel a dissatisfaction - if the table can be generated from
> the charmap files of GNU libc 2.1.x, it will be better? Although
> it's a bit incorrect attitude to assume as if GNU libc is always
> single internal codeset system based on UCS-4 forever, but, at least,
> the files in GNU libc are covered by LGPL, and they can be included
> in Pango package and redistributable as Pango.

Hmmm, I don't particularly like this;

 a) the tables in GNU libc are mostly generated via scripts
    from the Unicode consortium's data in any case

 b) the formats of the tables in the source are hard to
    process. (they are different for different character sets.)
 
 c) we'd have to wait for GNU libc to release the changes before 
    tracking any changes from the Unicode consortium.

 d) the source files are quite big (10 megs uncompressed), and
    I don't want to increase the Pango download time.

I think a makefile that used 'wget' to retrieve the files from
the Unicode consortium would make it easy for those few
people who need to rebuild the tables to do so.

Regards,
                                        Owen