state of umlaut and other char stuff problem

Tue Jul 29 16:54:00 GMT 2003

Hi Mohan,
I have been away from this mailing list for some time.
Thanks for the cc.
Mohan Embar wrote:
> My instinct was to
> go with Unicows in these cases, but I feel bad about neglecting
> JoÃ£o's short-term solution. 

There is nothing wrong with that since you are not interested in that 
short-term solution.
At the moment, I am quite happy with my short-term solution and with gcj 
3.3.
I have plans to post a patch that will make libgcj send wide-chars to 
the OS or (if required) will make it use libiconv insted of "my" tables. 
I think this could also be useful for posix platforms. But I have been 
busy with other things and I cannot say when this patch will be ready.
For me, the unicows solution is out of the question. It cannot be 
distributed along side with your application, unless you state that your 
users cannot re-distribute your application's instalation file (please 
read the unicows license for aditional problems...). Anyone can read 
about this problem at:
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/instructions.html
And now for the funny part (and quoting):
"Download the unicows.dll file. (Note: Microsoft seems to enjoy changing 
the exact location of this file. You may have to search Microsoft's 
website.)"
If you (or anyone else) are using unicows with gcj to solve filename 
problems, you must have a patch to libgcj for it to send wide-chars to 
the OS. It would be nice if you could share it with everybody else that 
is only interested in NT/2000/XP platform (you DO NOT need unicows for 
this platform -- it supports utf-16 by default and libgcj is only 
performing an unuseful and destuctive task in this case) or with anyone 
that is confortable with the unicows solution for Win9x platform. 
Otherwise, I will address this problem ASAP (whatever that may be...).
> That's also why I was motivated
> to document the MinGW build process so that others are free
> to communicate their patches in a way that others can build
> gcj with them, even if I don't agree with these or have the
> time to evaluate them.

It is a nice work. And it was quite useful to me, thank you.
I think it would be useful for many people if you could provide, in your 
website or somewhere else accessible, a tar.gz with the directory 
structure and the scripts for the build process. The user would only 
have to put the FSF and MingGW sources and "relevant" patches in the 
right places of the tree.
I would also suggest the reading of Ranjit's posts and website to anyone 
interested on building gcj for MinGW.
But I guess the idea of building gcc/gcj will still keep many potential 
GCJ/MinGW people away from using it...
JoÃ£o