CONVRTRS.TXT(5)

NAME
convrtrs.txt - ICU converters aliases file
cnvalias.icu - binary ICU converters aliases file

DESCRIPTION
The file convrtrs.txt lists the names of the converters that ICU can handle, along with their known aliases. ICU can open a converter given either its real name or any of its aliases. convrtrs.txt is read by gencnval(1) in order to generate the binary data that ICU uses to represent the converters aliases information.

Each converter and its aliases are described on a separate lines; fields on each line are separated by white space. The order of records in convrtrs.txt is significant: if a given name appears multiple times, the last one prevails. Names of converters and aliases are compared without considering case; the characters dash (U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS), underscore (U+005F LOW LINE), and space (U+0020 SPACE) are also ignored during comparison (even though spaces cannot be used in convrtrs.txt since white space is significant as a field delimiter). Thus the names UTF-8, utf_8, and Utf 8 are equivalent converters names.

The format of convrtrs.txt can be described by the following BNF grammar:

    converters ::= tags { converter }
    converter ::= name [ tags ] { alias }
    alias ::= name [ tags ]
    tags ::= '{' { tag } '}'
    tag ::= standard{*}
    comment ::= '#' anything

Line continuation and comment sytax are similar to the GNU make syntax. Any lines beginning with whitespace (e.g. U+0020 SPACE or U+0009 HORIZONTAL TABULATION) are presumed to be a continuation of the previous line.

The file must start with a list of recognized tags. These tags are used to get the correct converter implementation based on the defined standard tag. For instance, Shift-JIS on an IBM platform may be different from Shift-JIS on a Windows platform.

A name can use any character other than white space and the '{' and '#' delimiters. In practice, names are usually restricted to the set of uppercase and lowercase latin letters plus arabic digits, the dash, the underscore, and the colon characters. It is recommended to follow this convention when naming new converters or their aliases.

A comment starts with the pound character '#' and ends with the current line. Comments are ignored.

The name of a given converter must match its algorithmic name if the converter is algorithmic, or its file name if the converter is table-driven. The table for the converter ibm-912 for example, is expected to be in the ibm-912.cnv file. An alias has no such restriction, as aliases are just arbitrary names associated to a given converter.

The presence of a tag after a converter or alias name means that this name is associated to a given standard set of names. Two well-known such standards are the MIME and IANA registries of names. The default ICU convrtrs.txt file already uses these tags. These tags must be declared at the beginning of the file. Names appropriate for a given standard can be retrieved programmatically by using the ucnv_getStandardName() or the ucnv_openStandardNames() function. The asterisk (U+002A) is used to note which standard name is the default, and the preceding alias is returned by ucnv_getStandardName(). A standard tag may have multiple aliases recognized by the same standard for the same converter name.

CAVEATS
The convrtrs.txt file is not directly read by ICU. It must be transformed into a binary file by gencnval(1) first. Also, depending on the way ICU was packaged, even the resulting cnvalias.icu file may not be read by ICU. Please refer to the ICU manual for more information on which files are effectively read by ICU at runtime, and how to produce them.

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2000-2002 IBM, Inc. and others.

SEE ALSO
gencnval(1), pkgdata(1)