FreeTDS Development Group

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT schemamania.org>]

All, 

I added src/replacements/iconv.c to CVS tonight.  I missed the nightly
snapshot, and am having problems with SF CVS atm, so you might have to
wait 24 hours.  

The code itself is really quite simple, easier to write and understand
than what it replaces.  The replacement iconv(3) does three conversions:

1.  Like to like, a pass through.  
2.  ISO-8859-1 -> UCS2LE.
3.  UCS2LE -> ISO-8859-1.

This allows ASCII (and slightly better) clients to communicate with
Microsoft servers, restoring previously existing functionality.  

It might not work.  

This for sure: it doesn't break configurations --with iconv.  

For it to work as intended, the client character set must be identified as
"ISO-8851-1".  Unless you're very lucky, your OS won't use that name, so
you'll have to set it in freetds.conf.  

Beyond that, there's another issue I haven't had time to fully pursue. 
There are many places (too many, now) where we use #if HAVE_ICONV. 
Basically, the answer to that question, except in .h files, is almost
always Yes, because if it's not provided by the OS, it's provided by
FreeTDS.  

At this point, it's too late for me to reliably debug anything.  I wanted
to publish it as is for Bill Thompson's sake, to avoid requiring him to
write iconv.  

--jkl