This subdirectory contains a general character-set conversion library, used in Timber, and available for use in other software if it should happen to be useful. I intend to use this same library in other programs at some future date. (A cut-down version of it is already in use in some ports of PuTTY.) It is therefore a _strong_ design goal that this library should remain perfectly general, and not tied to particulars of Timber. It must not reference any code outside its own subdirectory; it should not have Timber-specific helper routines added to it unless they can be documented in a general manner which might make them useful in other circumstances as well. There are some multibyte character encodings which this library does not currently support. Those that I know of are: - Johab. There is no reason why we _shouldn't_ support this, but it wasn't immediately necessary at the time I did the initial coding. If anyone needs it, it shouldn't be too hard. The Unicode mapping table for the encoding is available at http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/OBSOLETE/EASTASIA/KSC/JOHAB.TXT - ISO-2022-JP-1 (RFC 2237), and ISO-2022-JP-2 (RFC 1554). These should be even easier if required - we already have the ISO 2022 machinery in place, and support all the underlying character sets. - ISO-2022-CN and ISO-2022-CN-EXT (RFC 1922). These are a little tricky as they allow use of both GB2312 (simplified Chinese) and CNS 11643 (traditional Chinese), so we may need some way to specify which to prefer. - The Hong Kong (HKSCS) extension to Big5. Again, mapping tables are available in the Unihan database. - Other Big Five extensions, which I don't have mapping tables for at all.