Report #9: Unicode support

[Baptiste Daroussin]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 01:08:58AM +0400, Dmitry Selyutin wrote:
> Hello everyone!
> 
> Here are the last news about the Unicode support project[0].
> You can always check my repository[1].
> 
> During these days I had hardware problems (my HDD peacefully died), so
> development didn't progress so much as before. However, I've
> eliminated these problems, so I tried to fix bugs and reorganize the
> code as much as possible. Now everything shall compile.
> 
> I decided to use __attribute__((constructor)) and
> __attribute__((destructor)), since I don't know if there exist a
> better way to open a file once in the startup and closing it when all
> routines close. I've found one or two occurrences of this construction
> in FreeBSD code; AFAICT it is rather common in clang and gcc, so I
> decided to use it. Hopefully it will also allow us to use root
> collation database in the embedded systems (if any such system really
> needs collation algorithm).
> 
> As you may know we need a tool that can convert collation text files
> obtained from unicode.org to new collation database (colldb) format.
> There is a version of this tool written in Python
> (share/examples/colldb/colldb.py). IIRC we can't use Python when we
> have a base system though, so it seems that we need to written such
> tool using C language. I was thinking of lex/yacc combo; I've never
> tried it, but I think it shouldn't be too hard to write a tool using
> it. I'd like to know your opinions about this task.
> I've already written a man page (bin/colldb/colldb.1). The only thing
> which seems dubious is that I decided to use the same name as for the
> library itself (well, it seems I have a lack of imagination). So we
> have both colldb.1 and colldb.3 man pages.
> 
> The other thing I'd really like to do is to really force network byte
> order in collation database format (I'm sure I've seen a way to do it
> in Berkley databases). It's a pity that I have no platform with
> big-endian (or even PDP!) byte order. Any help here is highly
> appreciated (as well as your thoughts about lex/yacc, i.e. thoughts
> whether it fits well to my task).
> 
> Since Google Summer of Code period has passed, I'd like to thank both
> my mentors, Pedro and David, who gave me a helping hand during this
> project, and especially Konrad Jankowski, who found time to answer my
> questions and help me too. Though GSoC is closed, I'd like to stay
> with FreeBSD project. First of all, I want to finish and bring to mind
> this project: I don't think it's really finished, especially its
> testing part, though it seems that new collation algorithm can already
> be used. Then I'd like to work in other parts of my project,
> especially in internationalization parts. I'd also like to improve my
> own library, qc, to provide a rich API for *BSD and POSIX systems,
> since I acutely feel the lack of such API. If it is possible to stay
> with project, I'd be very happy to do it. :-)
> 
> P.S. Does anyone knows how to get diff between only for my branch
> (i.e. for my part of repository)? svn diff -r $FIRST:$LAST seems to
> give everything what all FreeBSD's GSoC have done, so I need some
> other command. Thanks for your help!
> 
> [0] https://wiki.freebsd.org/SummerOfCode2014/Unicode
> [1] https://socsvn.freebsd.org/socsvn/soc2014/ghostmansd
> 

First thank you very much for your work on this subject this is highly needed.

Concerning the db format have you thought about using the new netbsd constant
database format?

It has simple API way easier to use, the db format is endian safe and final file
is smaller than equivalent in bdb format.

Lots of areas of FreeBSD could benefit from using this cdb format as well imho.

regards,
Bapt
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