HI Marko, On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 3:30 PM, Marko Myllynen <myllynen@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > On 2014-06-11 13:07, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote: >> On 06/11/2014 10:09 AM, Marko Myllynen wrote: >>> On 2014-06-10 22:28, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote: >>>> On 06/10/2014 10:38 AM, Marko Myllynen wrote: >>>>> >>>>> while updating the locale pages I noticed there was no iconv(1) page >>>>> in upstream so I wrote one, please see below. >>>> >>>> Thanks for doing this. Could I ask you to look at the comments below, and send >>>> a revised version, please. >>> >>> ok, please see below, hopefully the explanation are now clearer >>> without going into too low level details. >> >> Yes, thanks, a lot better. I have applied this, but have a question, below. >> >>> +.SH ENVIRONMENT >>> +Internally, the >>> +.B iconv >>> +program uses the >>> +.BR iconv (3) >>> +function which in turn uses >>> +.I gconv >>> +modules to convert to and from a character set. >>> +.B iconv >>> +supports any character set for which a >>> +corresponding gconv configuration and module are provided for. >>> +By default, the system provided gconv configuration and modules >>> +are used, but >>> +.B GCONV_PATH >>> +can be defined as a list of pathnames, separated by colons (\(aq:\(aq), >>> +for gconv configuration and module search path, >>> +to be searched prior to the system provided configuration and modules. >> >> That last sentence is long and hard to parse. What exactly is GCONV_PATH? >> Is it a list of configuration paths? module search paths? I am >> left uncertain after reading that sentence. > > yeah, I think I was trying to make a long story too short. > > When a program, such as iconv(1), uses iconv(3) (the function), it first > needs to allocate a conversion descriptor with iconv_open(3) and during > the iconv_open() call glibc, if GCONV_PATH is not set, loads the system > gconv cache file created by iconvconfig(8) and based on the > configuration then loads the needed gconv modules for conversion (an > example of a gconv module is CP1252.so). If GCONV_PATH is set, glibc > first tries to load the configuration files from the paths in GCONV_PATH > followed by the system configuration file. If a directory does not > contain a gconv module configuration file, possible gconv modules in it > are ignored. If a directory contains a gconv module configuration file > and it is determined that a needed module for this conversion is > available in the directory, then the needed module is loaded from there, > the order being so that the first suitable module found in GCONV_PATH is > used. This allows users to use custom modules and even replace system > provided modules by providing such modules in GCONV_PATH directories. It sounds like you mean the above paragraph should be added to the page. Is that correct? Cheers, Michael -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/ -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
