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ENC2XS(1)	       Perl Programmers Reference Guide 	     ENC2XS(1)



NAME
       enc2xs -- Perl Encode Module Generator

SYNOPSIS
	 enc2xs -[options]
	 enc2xs -M ModName mapfiles...
	 enc2xs -C

DESCRIPTION
       enc2xs builds a Perl extension for use by Encode from either Unicode
       Character Mapping files (.ucm) or Tcl Encoding Files (.enc).  Besides
       being used internally during the build process of the Encode module,
       you can use enc2xs to add your own encoding to perl.  No knowledge of
       XS is necessary.

Quick Guide
       If you want to know as little about Perl as possible but need to add a
       new encoding, just read this chapter and forget the rest.

       0.  Have a .ucm file ready.  You can get it from somewhere or you can
	   write your own from scratch or you can grab one from the Encode
	   distribution and customize it.  For the UCM format, see the next
	   Chapter.  In the example below, Ill call my theoretical encoding
	   myascii, defined in my.ucm.	"$" is a shell prompt.

	     $ ls -F
	     my.ucm

       1.  Issue a command as follows;

	     $ enc2xs -M My my.ucm
	     generating Makefile.PL
	     generating My.pm
	     generating README
	     generating Changes

	   Now take a look at your current directory.  It should look like
	   this.

	     $ ls -F
	     Makefile.PL   My.pm	 my.ucm        t/

	   The following files were created.

	     Makefile.PL - MakeMaker script
	     My.pm	 - Encode submodule
	     t/My.t	 - test file

	   1.1.
	       If you want *.ucm installed together with the modules, do as
	       follows;

		 $ mkdir Encode
		 $ mv *.ucm Encode
		 $ enc2xs -M My Encode/*ucm

       2.  Edit the files generated.  You dont have to if you have no time
	   AND no intention to give it to someone else.  But it is a good idea
	   to edit the pod and to add more tests.

       3.  Now issue a command all Perl Mongers love:

	     $ perl Makefile.PL
	     Writing Makefile for Encode::My

       4.  Now all you have to do is make.

	     $ make
	     cp My.pm blib/lib/Encode/My.pm
	     /usr/local/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/enc2xs -Q -O \
	       -o encode_t.c -f encode_t.fnm
	     Reading myascii (myascii)
	     Writing compiled form
	     128 bytes in string tables
	     384 bytes (75%) saved spotting duplicates
	     1 bytes (0.775%) saved using substrings
	     ....
	     chmod 644 blib/arch/auto/Encode/My/My.bs
	     $

	   The time it takes varies depending on how fast your machine is and
	   how large your encoding is.	Unless you are working on something
	   big like euc-tw, it wont take too long.

       5.  You can "make install" already but you should test first.

	     $ make test
	     PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 /usr/local/bin/perl -Iblib/arch -Iblib/lib \
	       -e use Test::Harness  qw(&runtests $verbose); \
	       $verbose=0; runtests @ARGV; t/*.t
	     t/My....ok
	     All tests successful.
	     Files=1, Tests=2,	0 wallclock secs
	      ( 0.09 cusr + 0.01 csys = 0.09 CPU)

       6.  If you are content with the test result, just "make install"

       7.  If you want to add your encoding to Encodes demand-loading list
	   (so you dont have to "use Encode::YourEncoding"), run

	     enc2xs -C

	   to update Encode::ConfigLocal, a module that controls local set
	   tings.  After that, "use Encode;" is enough to load your encodings
	   on demand.

The Unicode Character Map
       Encode uses the Unicode Character Map (UCM) format for source character
       mappings.  This format is used by IBMs ICU package and was adopted by
       Nick Ing-Simmons for use with the Encode module.  Since UCM is more
       flexible than Tcls Encoding Map and far more user-friendly, this is
       the recommended formet for Encode now.

       A UCM file looks like this.

	 #
	 # Comments
	 #
	  "US-ascii" # Required
	  "ascii"   # Optional
	  1 	    # Required; usually 1
	  1 	    # Max. # of bytes/char
	  \x3F 	    # Substitution char
	 #
	 CHARMAP
	  \x00 |0 # 
	  \x01 |0 # 
	  \x02 |0 # 
	 ....
	  \x7C |0 # VERTICAL LINE
	  \x7D |0 # RIGHT CURLY BRACKET
	  \x7E |0 # TILDE
	  \x7F |0 # 
	 END CHARMAP

	  Anything that follows "#" is treated as a comment.

	  The header section continues until a line containing the word
	   CHARMAP. This section has a form of  value, one pair per
	   line.  Strings used as values must be quoted. Barewords are treated
	   as numbers.	\xXX represents a byte.

	   Most of the keywords are self-explanatory. subchar means substitu
	   tion character, not subcharacter.  When you decode a Unicode
	   sequence to this encoding but no matching character is found, the
	   byte sequence defined here will be used.  For most cases, the value
	   here is \x3F; in ASCII, this is a question mark.

	  CHARMAP starts the character map section.  Each line has a form as
	   follows:

	      \xXX.. |0 # comment
	       ^     ^	    ^
	       |     |	    +- Fallback flag
	       |     +-------- Encoded byte sequence
	       +-------------- Unicode Character ID in hex

	   The format is roughly the same as a header section except for the
	   fallback flag: | followed by 0..3.	The meaning of the possible
	   values is as follows:

	   |0  Round trip safe.  A character decoded to Unicode encodes back
	       to the same byte sequence.  Most characters have this flag.

	   |1  Fallback for unicode -> encoding.  When seen, enc2xs adds this
	       character for the encode map only.

	   |2  Skip sub-char mapping should there be no code point.

	   |3  Fallback for encoding -> unicode.  When seen, enc2xs adds this
	       character for the decode map only.

	  And finally, END OF CHARMAP ends the section.

       When you are manually creating a UCM file, you should copy ascii.ucm or
       an existing encoding which is close to yours, rather than write your
       own from scratch.

       When you do so, make sure you leave at least U0000 to U0020 as is,
       unless your environment is EBCDIC.

       CAVEAT: not all features in UCM are implemented.  For example,
       icu:state is not used.  Because of that, you need to write a perl mod
       ule if you want to support algorithmical encodings, notably the
       ISO-2022 series.  Such modules include Encode::JP::2022_JP,
       Encode::KR::2022_KR, and Encode::TW::HZ.

       Coping with duplicate mappings

       When you create a map, you SHOULD make your mappings round-trip safe.
       That is, "encode(your-encoding, decode(your-encoding, $data)) eq
       $data" stands for all characters that are marked as "|0".  Here is how
       to make sure:

	  Sort your map in Unicode order.

	  When you have a duplicate entry, mark either one with |1 or |3.

	  And make sure the |1 or |3 entry FOLLOWS the |0 entry.

       Here is an example from big5-eten.

	  \xF9\xF9 |0
	  \xA2\xA4 |3

       Internally Encoding -> Unicode and Unicode -> Encoding Map looks like
       this;

	 E to U 	      U to E
	 --------------------------------------
	 \xF9\xF9 => U2550    U2550 => \xF9\xF9
	 \xA2\xA4 => U2550

       So it is round-trip safe for \xF9\xF9.  But if the line above is upside
       down, here is what happens.

	 E to U 	      U to E
	 --------------------------------------
	 \xA2\xA4 => U2550    U2550 => \xF9\xF9
	 (\xF9\xF9 => U2550 is now overwritten!)

       The Encode package comes with ucmlint, a crude but sufficient utility
       to check the integrity of a UCM file.  Check under the Encode/bin
       directory for this.

       When in doubt, you can use ucmsort, yet another utility under
       Encode/bin directory.

Bookmarks
	  ICU Home Page 

	  ICU Character Mapping Tables 

	  ICU:Conversion Data 

SEE ALSO
       Encode, perlmod, perlpod



perl v5.8.8			  2008-04-25			     ENC2XS(1)




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