Re: [PATCHES] FW: Win32 unicode vs ICU

Folks, we need to address the questions asked in this email and get it
into CVS soon.

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Magnus Hagander wrote:
> I just realised this mail didn't go through. Probably because it was too
> large for -hackers. So: repost to -patches. Sorry about that. If it's a
> duplicate, even more sorry, but I couldn't find it in the archives.
> 
> (This may explain that nobody answered me :P)
> 
> //Magnus
>  
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Magnus Hagander 
> > Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2005 2:09 PM
> > To: PostgreSQL-development
> > Cc: pgsql-hackers-win32@postgresql.org
> > Subject: Win32 unicode vs ICU
> > 
> > Hi!
> > 
> > I've been working with Palles ICU patch to make it work on 
> > win32, and I believe I have it done. While doing it I noticed 
> > that ICU basically converts to UTF16 and back - I previously 
> > thought it worked on UTF8 strings. Based on this I also tried 
> > out an implementation for the win32-unicode problem that does 
> > *not* require ICU. It uses the win32 native functions to map 
> > to utf16 and back, and then to process the text there. And I 
> > got through with much less code than the ICU version, while 
> > doing the same thing.
> > 
> > I am unsure of how to proceed. As I see it there are three paths:
> > 1) Use native win32 functionality only on win32
> > 2) Use ICU functionality only on win32
> > 3) Allow both ICU and native functionality, compile time 
> > switch --with-icu (same as unix with the ICU patch)
> > 
> > 
> > The main downsides of ICU vs the native ones are:
> > * ICU does not accept win32 locale names. When doing 
> > setlocale("sv_se"), for example, win32 will return this in 
> > later calls as "Swedish_Sweden.1252". To get around this in 
> > the ICU patch, I had to implement a lookup map that converts 
> > it back to sv_se for ICU.
> > 
> > * ICU is yet another build and runtime dependency, and a 
> > large one (comes in at 11Mb for the DLL files alone in the 
> > win32 download)
> > 
> > 
> > I guess that the main upside of it is that we'd get 
> > constistent behaviour - in case there are issues with either 
> > ICU or win32 native they'd otherwise differ. And only one new 
> > codepath. But we already live with the platform-inconsistency today...
> > 
> > Another upside is that it handles more encodings in ICU - my 
> > native implementation does *only* UTF8 and relies on existing 
> > functionality to deal with other encodings. It could of 
> > course be extended if necessary, but from what I can tell 
> > UTF8 is the big one.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > I have attached both patches. For the native version, only 
> > win32_utf8.patch is required.  For the ICU version, 
> > icu_win32.patch is needed and also the files 
> > localemap.c,localemap.pl, iso639 and iso3166 needs to go in 
> > src/backend/port/win32. (the localemap needs to be updated to 
> > do a better-than-linear search, but I wanted to include an example)
> > 
> > 
> > Thoughts on the options?
> > 
> > 
> > And anohter question - my native patch touches the same 
> > functions as the ICU patch. Can somebody who knows the 
> > internals confirm or deny that these are all the required 
> > locations, or do we need to modify more?
> > 
> > (I have run simple tests in swedish locale and both behave 
> > the same and correct, but I'm unsure of exactly how much 
> > would be affected)
> > 
> > Finally, the win32 patch also changes the normal path to use 
> > strncoll(). The comment above the function states that we'd 
> > like to use strncoll but it's not available. Well, on win32 
> > it is, so it should provide a speedup on win32. It is 
> > currently not included in the ICU patch, but should probably 
> > be included whichever path we'd chose.
> > 
> > 
> > //Magnus
> > 

Content-Description: win32_utf8.patch

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Content-Description: icu_win32.patch

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Content-Description: localemap.pl

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Content-Description: localemap.c

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