Free recode package

Recode NEWS - User visible changes

Contents

Copyright:© 1993-1999, 2000, 2001, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Version 3.7-beta2

Author:François Pinard, 2008-03.
  • Recode does no include libiconv anymore, but uses an external iconv library if one was available at installation time.
  • Many internal changes, for correcting reported bugs.

1   Version 3.6

Author:François Pinard, Bruno Haible, 2001-01.

1.1   General changes

  • The recode manual is now indexed, by charset, by concept, etc.
  • Program messages are also available in Greek, Gallicean and Italian.
  • Bruno Haible's nice portable iconv library has been integrated.
  • RFC 1345 tables and French character names have been updated.
  • The Texinfo charset has been refreshed, and made reversible.

1.2   New charsets

(most from libiconv)

  • Japanese
    • EUC-JP (csEUCPkdFmtJapanese, EUC_JP, Extended_UNIX_Code_Packed_Format_for_Japanese);
    • ISO-2022-JP (csISO2022JP); ISO-2022-JP-1; ISO-2022-JP-2 (csISO2022JP2);
    • JIS_C6220-1969-ro (csISO14JISC6220ro, ISO646-JP, iso-ir-14, jp);
    • JIS_X0201 (csHalfWidthKatakana, JIS0201, JISX0201-1976, JISX0201.1976-0, X0201);
    • JIS_X0208 (csISO87JISX0208, ISO-IR-87, JIS0208, JIS_X0208.1983-0, JIS_X0208.1983-1, JIS_X0208-1990-0, JIS_X0208.1983-1, X0208);
    • JIS_X0212 (csISO159JISX02121990, ISO-IR-159, JIS0212, JIS_X0212.1990-0, JIS_X0212-1990, X0212);
    • SJIS (csShiftJIS, MS_KANJI, SHIFT-JIS).

. + Chinese

  • BIG5 (BIG-5, BIG-FIVE, BIGFIVE, CN-BIG5 csBig5); BIG5HKSCS;
  • EUC-CN (CN-GB, csGB2312, EUC_CN, GB2312); EUC-TW (csEUCTW, EUC_TW);
  • GB18030; HZ (HZ-GB-2312); ISO-2022-CN (csISO2022CN); ISO-2022-CN-EXT;
  • GB_1988-80 (cn, csISO57GB1988, ISO646-CN, iso-ir-57);
  • GB_2312-80 (CHINESE, csISO58GB231280, GB2312.1980-0, ISO-IR-58);
  • ISO-IR-165 (CN-GB-ISOIR165).

. + Korean

  • JOHAB (CP1361); EUC-KR (csEUCKR, EUC_KR); GBK (CP936);
  • ISO-2022-KR (csISO2022KR);
  • KSC_5601 (CP949, csKSC56011987, ISO-IR-149, KOREAN, KSC5601.1987-0, KS_C_5601-1987, KS_C_5601-1989, KSX1001:1992).

. + Vietnamese (independently of libiconv)

  • TCVN; VIQR; VISCII; VNI; VPS.

. + Other languages

  • ARMSCII-8; Georgian-Academy; Georgian-PS; WINDOWS-874 (CP874);
  • MuleLao-1; CP1133 (IBM-CP1133); CP1258 (WINDOWS-1258);
  • TIS-620 (ISO-IR-166, TIS620, TIS620.2529-1, TIS620-0, TIS620.2533-0, TIS620.2533-1).

. + Apple specifics

  • MacArabic; MacCentralEurope; MacCroatian; MacCyrillic; MacGreek;
  • MacHebrew; MacIceland; MacRomania; MacThai; MacTurkish; MacUkraine

. + Unicode

  • JAVA; UCS-2-INTERNAL; UCS-2LE (UnicodeLITTLE); UCS-2-SWAPPED; UCS-4BE;
  • UCS-4-INTERNAL; UCS-4LE; UCS-4-SWAPPED; UTF-16BE; UTF-16LE.

. + Others

  • CP932; CP949 (UHC); CP950; CP866 (866, csIBM866, IBM866).
  • ISO-8859-16 (ISO-IR-226, ISO_8859-16:2000).

. + Recode internal

  • libiconv:(:) [so option -x: avoids going through libiconv]

1.3   New aliases

(from libiconv) [list to be revised]

  • csASCII (for ANSI_X3.4-1968); csHPRoman8 (for hp-roman8);
  • csISOLatin1 (for ISO-8859-1); csISOLatin2 (for ISO-8859-2);
  • csISOLatin3 (for ISO-8859-3); csISOLatin4 (for ISO-8859-4);
  • csISOLatin5 (for ISO-8859-9);
  • csISOLatin6 and ISO_8859-10:1992 (for ISO-8859-10);
  • csISOLatinArabic (for ISO-8859-6); csISOLatinCyrillic (for ISO-8859-5);
  • csISOLatinGreek (for ISO-8859-7); csISOLatinHebrew (for ISO-8859-8);
  • csKOI8R (for KOI8-R); csPC850Multilingual (for IBM850);
  • csUCS4 (for ISO-10646-UCS-4);
  • csUnicode, csUnicode11, UCS-2BE, UnicodeBIG (for ISO-10646-UCS-2);
  • csUnicode11UTF7 (for UNICODE-1-1-UTF-7);
  • csVISCII and VISCII1.1-1 (for VISCII);
  • ISO-IR-179 (for ISO-8859-13); csMacintosh and MacRoman (for macintosh);
  • TCVN5712-1, TCVN5712-1:1993 and TCVN-5712 (for TCVN).

1.4   New surfaces

  • tree (experimental).

2   Version 3.5

Author:François Pinard, 1999-05.

2.1   Incompatible changes

  • A double dot .. should now be used instead of a colon :.
  • Option --force (-f) is needed to pursue recoding despite errors.
  • There is no more quoting for special characters within charsets names.
  • Auto check (-a) and popen (-o) options have been withdrawn.
  • Some charsets and aliases were deleted, see Charsets & aliases below.

2.2   Extended features

  • Program messages are available in localised form for many languages.
  • Long character names are available in French, if LANGUAGE is set to fr.
  • A new request syntax allows for recode chaining, and for surfaces.
  • Option --header-file (-h) accepts a language parameter, and Perl is new.
  • Full charset listings now show the UCS-2 value for characters.
  • Option --known=PAIRS (-k) also accepts octal and hexadecimal numbers.
  • Option --list (-l) better sorts charsets and aliases, also fully written.
  • Charset RFC1345 implements mnemonic+ascii+38, and is now reversible.
  • HTML is not limited anymore to Latin-1, HTML 4.0 entities are supported.

2.3   New features

  • Euro support.
  • Updated RFC 1345 set of tables, from Keld Simonsen.
  • Some African charsets and transliterated forms.
  • Conversions for ISO 10646 and Unicode.
  • Combining or explosion of UCS-2 diacriticized characters and ligatures.
  • Implementation of surfaces, see Surfaces & aliases below.
  • Mixed mode for recoding only comments and strings in C sources or PO files.
  • A stand-alone recoding library gets installed, often as a shared library.
  • Option --find-subsets (-T) lists charsets which are subsets of another.
  • The library may generate testing data, and study character frequencies.

2.4   Charsets & aliases

  • New ISO 10646 and Unicode charsets
    • combined-UCS-2: pseudo-charset.
    • count-characters: pseudo-charset.
    • dump-with-names: pseudo-charset.
    • ISO-10646-UCS-2 (UNICODE-1-1, BMP, rune, u2).
    • ISO-10646-UCS-4 (10646, ISO-10646, UCS-4, u4).
    • UNICODE-1-1-UTF-7 (TF-7, u7).
    • UTF-8 (UTF-2, UTF-FSS, FSS_UTF, TF-8, u8).
    • UTF-16 (Unicode, TF-16, u6).
  • RFC 1345.bis matters
    • Deleted charsets
      • dk-us, us-dk (because of &duplicate which Recode does not handle yet).
    • New charsets
      • baltic (alias is iso-ir-179); CP1250 (1250, ms-ee, windows-1250);
      • CP1251 (1251, ms-cyrl, windows-1251);
      • CP1252 (1252, ms-ansi, windows-1252);
      • CP1253 (1253, ms-greek, windows-1253);
      • CP1254 (1254, ms-turk, windows-1254);
      • CP1255 (1255, ms-hebr, windows-1255);
      • CP1256 (1256, ms-arab, windows-1256);
      • CP1257 (1257, WinBaltRim, windows-1257);
      • CWI (CWI-2, cp-hu); EBCDIC-IS-FRISS (friss);
      • GOST_19768-87 with aliases of previous GOST_19768-74;
      • IBM256 (256, CP256, EBCDIC-INT1); IBM875 (875, CP875, EBCDIC-Greek);
      • IBM1004 (1004, CP1004, os2latin1); IBM1047 (1047, CP1047);
      • ISO-8859-13 (ISO_8859-13:1998, iso-baltic, iso-ir-179a, l7, latin7);
      • ISO-8859-14 (ISO_8859-14:1998, iso-celtic, iso-ir-199, l8, latin8);
      • ISO-8859-15 (ISO_8859-15:1998, iso-ir-203, l9, latin9);
      • KOI-7; KOI-8 (GOST_19768-74); KOI8-R; KOI8-RU; KOI8-U;
      • macintosh_ce (macce); mac-is;
      • NeXTSTEP (next) yet previous Recode had it outside RFC 1345.
    • Alias promoted to charset (with previous charset becoming alias)
      • ISO-646.basic (with ISO-646.basic:1983); ISO-646.irv (ISO-646.irv:1983);
      • ISO_5427-ext (ISO_5427:1981); ISO_5428 (ISO_5428:1980);
      • ISO-8859-1 (ISO_8859-1:1987); ISO-8859-2 (ISO_8859-2:1987);
      • ISO-8859-3 (ISO_8859-3:1988); ISO-8859-4 (ISO_8859-4:1988);
      • ISO-8859-5 (ISO_8859-5:1988); ISO-8859-6 (ISO_8859-6:1987);
      • ISO-8859-7 (ISO_8859-7:1987); ISO-8859-8 (ISO_8859-8:1988);
      • ISO-8859-9 (ISO_8859-9:1989); ISO-8859-10 (latin6);
      • NC_NC00-10 (NC_NC00-10:81); sami (latin-lap).
    • New aliases
      • 037 (for charset IBM037); 038 (IBM038); 273 (IBM273); 274 (IBM274);
      • 275 (IBM275); 278 (IBM278); 280 (IBM280); 281 (IBM281); 284 (IBM284);
      • 285 (IBM285); 290 (IBM290); 297 (IBM297); 367 (ANSI_X3.4-1968);
      • 420 (IBM420); 423 (IBM423); 424 (IBM424); 500, 500V1 (IBM500);
      • 819 (ISO-8859-1); 864 (IBM864); 868 (IBM868); 870 (IBM870);
      • 871 (IBM871); 880 (IBM880); 891 (IBM891); 903 (IBM903); 905 (IBM905);
      • 912, CP912, IBM912 (ISO-8859-2); 918 (IBM918); 1026 (IBM1026);
      • ECMA-113, ECMA-113:1986 (ECMA-Cyrillic); GOST_19768-74 (KOI8);
      • ISO_8859-N (ISO-8859-N) for N = 1 through 10 and 13 through 15;
      • ISO_8859-10:1993 (ISO-8869-10); iso-ir-170 (INVARIANT);
      • KOI8_L2 (CSN_369103); pclatin2, pcl2 (IBM852); SS636127 (SEN_850200_B).
  • New African charsets
    • AFRL1-101-BPI_OCIL (t-francais, t-fra);
    • AFRFUL-102-BPI_OCIL (bambara, bra, ewondo, fulfulde);
    • AFRFUL-103-BPI_OCIL (t-bambara, t-bra, t-ewondo, t-fulfulde);
    • AFRLIN-104-BPI_OCIL (lingala, lin, sango, wolof);
    • AFRLIN-105-BPI_OCIL (t-lingala, t-lin, t-sango, t-wolof).
  • Extra miscellaneous charsets
    • KEYBCS2 (Kamenicky); CORK (T1); KOI-8_CS2.
  • New HTML pseudo-charsets
    • HTML_1.1 (h1); HTML_2.0 (RFC 1866, 1866, h2); HTML-i18n (RFC 2070);
    • HTML_3.2 (h3) reimplemented; HTML_4.0 (h4, HTML, h);
    • deleted aliases HTF, 8859, ISO 8859, Entities, SGML, WWW, w3.

2.5   Surfaces & aliases

  • Base64 (64, b64); Quoted-Printable (qp, Quote-Printable);
  • 21-Permutation (swabytes); 4321-Permutation; CR; CR-LF (cl);
  • Decimal-1 (d, d1); Decimal-2 (d2), Decimal-4 (d4);
  • Hexadecimal-1 (x, x1); Hexadecimal-2 (x2); Hexadecimal-4 (x4);
  • Octal-1 (o, o1); Octal-2 (o2); Octal-4 (o4).
  • data; test7; test8; test15; test16.

3   Version 3.4

Author:François Pinard, 1994-11.
  • Charset HTML is new, it handles &...; sequences for Latin-1.
  • Charset AtariST handling is more general, --list may be used with it.
  • Charset ASCII-BS overstriking has been extended, mainly for German.
  • Charset RFC1345 may be a goal, to debug or study RFC 1345 short names.
  • Charset names have been revised. Note that nextstep is now NeXT.
  • Option --force (-f) is accepted, but does not yet protect reversibility.
  • Option --quiet or --silent (-q) silences irreversible recoding messages.
  • Option --known=PAIRS (-k) helps searching through recodings.
  • Option --sequence=pipe (-p) does not fall back on -o anymore.
  • Option --auto-check may narrow its study around one particular charset.
  • An MSDOS port is available, check ftp.iro.umontreal.ca in pub/gnuish.
  • Compilation should now succeed on OS/2 EMX. Thanks to Kai Uwe Rommel.
  • Program initialization is almost three times faster on average.
  • Corrected reported bugs, added small improvements, some aesthetic.

4   Version 3.3

Author:François Pinard, 1993-12.
  • Charsets atarist, ebcdic-ccc, ebcdic-ibm and nextstep have been added.
  • Also, most RFC 1345 charsets and aliases are handled. That's a bunch!
  • Old ascii disappears because of RFC 1345's ascii, use ascii-bs instead.
  • Old maci disappears because of RFC 1345's macintosh, use applemac instead.
  • Charsets cccascii and cdcascii disappear, use ebcdic-ccc and ebcdic instead.
  • Recoding between latin1, ibmpc and applemac is (almost) reversible.
  • The texinfo documentation has been reorganized, this to be continued.
  • Long options are accepted, charset names may be abbreviated.
  • Option --list (-l) displays charsets, aliases and contents in many formats.
  • Option --strict (-s) asks for stricter, non-reversible recodings.
  • Option --graphics (-g) approximates ibmpc rulers with ASCII graphics.
  • Option --header (-h) produces C source for many recoding tables.
  • Option --auto-check (-a) reports about all possible recodings.
  • Option --ignore (-x) prevents a charset from being selected.
  • Execution has been sped up through step merging, hashing for charset names.
  • Many various buglets have been eradicated, portability increased.
  • Charsets may be edited out by modifying the Makefile only.
  • Configuration is made through the use of an external config.h file.
  • New -d diacritics_only option for LaTeX.
  • A few bugs have been corrected.
  • Documentation reorganization and improvements.
  • Increased portability, now uses Autoconf.
  • A few bugs solved.

5   Version 3.2

Author:François Pinard, 1991-10.
  • MSDOS port redone.
  • New check goal at installation time.
  • Add -v option for verbose processing, remove old -q.
  • Add -i, -o and -p for letting the user control the strategy.
  • A few bugs corrected.
  • Embedded NULs should now be transmitted.

6   Version 3.1

Author:François Pinard, 1990-03.
  • Rename -V to -C for showing Copyright.
  • Calling sequence changed, said files now recoded on themselves.
  • Add -t option for touching files.
  • Better on-line help.
  • Add -q option for quiet processing.
  • Executable file now considerably smaller, also speedier.
  • A few bugs corrected.

7   Version 3.0

Author:François Pinard, 1989-10.
  • New Text to Latin1 processing, should be faster.
  • A few bugs corrected.

For prior history down to 1980, see at the end of the ChangeLog.