Re: Unicode conversion (Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql (configure.in))

> > Add new configure option "--enable-uniconv" that enables automatic
> > code conversion between Unicode and other encodings. Note that
> > this option requires --enable-multibyte also.
> > The reason why this is optional is that the feature requires huge
> > mapping tables and I don't think every user need the feature.
> 
> Can you explain what this does?  Does it mean frontends can use Unicode as
> their character set?

Yes. Here are some examples:

(1) both backend/frontend uses Unicode(actually UTF-8)

$ createdb -E unicode unicode
$ psql unicode
[some sessions follow using UTF-8]           :           :

Note that this is not a new functionality as opposite to (2), (3).

(2) backend is ISO8859-2 but frontend is UNICODE

$ createdb -E LATIN2 latin2
$ psql latin2
\encoding UNICODE
[some sessions follows using UTF-8]           :           :

Note that if you type in a wrong ISO8859-2 character that could not be
converted to UTF-8, you would get notices something like:

NOTICE:  local_to_utf: could not convert (0x00b4) LATIN2 to UTF-8. Ignored

(3) backend is Unicode but frontend is ISO8859-2

$ createdb -E unicode unicode
$ psql unicode
\encoding LATIN2
[some sessions follow using ISO8859-2]           :           :

Same note above...
--
Tatsuo Ishii