I've never implemented i18n myself so I'm not familiar with all of the relevant issues. Here is what I understand/hypothesize, and hopefully those that know better will correct me where I'm wrong:
- AOLserver (3.3 era) didn't support encoding stuff. Arsdigita patched AOLserver to support it, adding their functions to the C and
TCL APIs. (ns_charsets, ns_encodingfortype, ns_encodingforcharset, etc.) acs-lang uses these functions.
- AOL didn't incorporate the patches. We don't know if there is something about these patches in particular that they don't like, but we don't think there is. Based on their actions the past few weeks, I think they will be more welcoming now.
- But as Bernd mentioned, in AOLserver 4.0 (at least) they've already implemented some similar functions. 4.0 uses these functions internally and exports them in the C API. (Ns_ConnGetEncoding, Ns_ConnSetEncoding, Ns_GetEncoding, Ns_GetFileEncoding, Ns_GetTypeEncoding, Ns_GetCharsetEncoding) However, it doesn't export them in the TCL API.
- Making acs-lang work with AOLserver 4.0 probably just requires making these functions accessible in TCL and maybe adding the few other C and TCL functions Arsdigita added for setting encoding on a page-by-page basis. Given the patch files floating around, I'm guessing this would not be difficult for someone who knows AOLserver and acs-lang well enough.
- But before beginning on that work, the people interested in doing it should join the AOLserver chat and ask the AOL crew about their opinion on the matter. I might be underestimating the difficulty or they might have some secret objection to incorporating the work. They might even be planning on doing it themselves and just haven't told anyone about it. 😊
