Re: Proof of concept COLLATE support with patch

On Sun, Sep 04, 2005 at 06:06:11PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Greg Stark <gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu> writes:
> > But there's nothing wrong with saying "it's slow because your
> > libc is slow. Compile with this freely available library which has a better
> > implementation".
>
> The hole in that argument is the assumption that there *is* a freely
> available library that can be used (where freely == BSD license).
> We wouldn't be having this discussion if we knew of one.

1. Use the one in Darwin just for the *BSDs and Solaris at least. It's
not great but it would probably work.

2. Long term, transition to ICU (http://icu.sourceforge.net/) which is
the cross-platform internationalisation library used by Java. Looks
like Mono and Gnome/GTK are going to use this (or at least allow use
of) soon also. It uses the X licence AFAICS. It's a big pill right now
but it a year it could be installed standard on most linux systems.
It's at least avaiable everywhere now.

Note, it's not compatable with POSIX locales so if we go there it'll be
an all or nothing switch. But if we intend to go there eventually, it
makes fiddling on our own library a waste of time.

Incidently, I played with the code in Darwin and getting it to compile
on a system that already has extended locale support is, uh, tricky to
say the least. Lots of conflicting definitions.
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog(at)svana(dot)org> http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Patent. n. Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. A patent is a
> tool for doing 5% of the work and then sitting around waiting for someone
> else to do the other 95% so you can sue them.