Re: Best fit

[Erik van der Poel <erikv@google.com>]

One pair of Windows APIs is MultiByteToWideChar and
WideCharToMultiByte. You can find several other MSIE APIs by looking
for "mlang" at msdn.microsoft.com/library. In particular, look for
"mlconvchar".

I don't know how the best fit tables were created. Some parts look
like they were mechanically generated, but other parts make me suspect
that they were hand-edited there, e.g. inconsistent use of tabs and
spaces, inconsistent use of Control-Z at EOF (end of file).

It is up to Microsoft to supply an email contact for the best fit
files. Since people sometimes leave companies, it might also be a good
idea to provide an alias or list like cpxlate or globaldev(?).

I will address the "u2w.icu( x ) != u2w.bestfit( x )" in a separate email.

Erik

On 10/21/06, Frank Ellermann <nobody@xyzzy.claranet.de> wrote:
> Erik van der Poel wrote:
>
> > I don't know who created the tables, but they were submitted by an
> > individual from Microsoft.
>
> For "surprising" mappings it's interesting to know how they could be
> reproduced or verified, or if that's maybe only an observation with
> API xyz version m.n by an "unknown" individual.
>
> > ICU may have chosen 0x1A, but that was their own decision. There is
> > no interoperability problem here
>
> An u2w.icu( x ) != u2w.bestfit( x ) effect could be ugly.  For some
> code pages like <http://purl.net/net/cp/858> ICU tries hard to list
> an "official" substitution character, in that case 0x7F, not 0x1A.
>
> > The 698 WCTABLE mappings are from Microsoft's implementation.
> [...]
> > I have confirmed that their implementation does return these.
>
> Thanks for info, "did anybody check this" was a part of my question.
>
> > The mappings are sorted in a strange way. Maybe they will fix that,
> > but it shouldn't prevent this charset from being updated at IANA.
>
> Sure, that's why I've changed the subject.  I wanted to know how the
> new "best fit" tables were created.  This "best fit" is unrelated to
> IANA considerations.
>
> > Should we strip the best fit mappings from the table and post it
> > somewhere?
>
> They're fine, but could be improved by adding a hint how they were
> determined, and who could fix them if needed.
>
> Frank
>
>
>