[Python-Dev] _iconv_codec

[Hye-Shik Chang]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 08:08:13AM -0500, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Can anybody explain the point of the iconv_codec module to me?  I see
> no docs for it, there's a continued stream of bug reports related to
> it.  I've heard that it's a wrapper around some 3rd party library, but
> that doesn't help me -- I don't know anything about that 3rd party
> library module either.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
> 

_iconv_codec wraps around iconv(3) function which is defined in
POSIX. (http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/functions/iconv.html)
IMHO, we don't need docs for it because no user is expected to access
_iconv_codec directly. It just provides a codec set interface to libiconv
when python doesn't have standard codec for some encoding.

I feel that raising RuntimeError on init_iconv_codec is producing numerous
bug reports. Because insane iconv(3) is fatal for iconv_codec but
not for python, I think it should raise ImportError instead of RuntimeError.

To be honest, there're some minor problems on _iconv_codec that I know,
currently. I'm working on an unified multibyte codec codebase for
{zh,ja,ko,iconv}codecs nowadays. I guess that I can submit fully
reimplemented versions of {zh,ko,iconv}codecs in a week. It will resolve
most problems on now.

Sorry for immature status of _iconv_codec and I will do my best to make it
stable before 2.3b1.

Thank you.


Regards,

    Hye-Shik =)