[gdal-dev] RFC 23: OGR Unicode

[Ben Discoe]

> -----
> From: Frank Warmerdam
>    http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/rfc23_ogr_unicode
>
> "This RFC specifically does not attempt to address issues of using non-ascii filenames."

I'd like to add my two cents here.

While RFC23[.1] might be a reasonable addition, it is not a vital one.  By vital, i mean that it does not allow us to do anything we could not already do.

E.g. If i am reading a SHP using OGR, and i know that the text is in Chinese (GB2312), i can call iconv myself to convert from GB2312 to UTF8 or any other charset.  Telling OGR about the encoding and calling extra OGR methods to do the same thing might be slightly more convenient, but not a step forward in functionality.

Support for UTF-8 filenames, on the other hand, would be vital and genuinely useful.  Right now, on a English-language Windows OS, GDAL cannot and will not open any filename with non-ANSI characters.  No Chinese filenames.  And the reverse is true as well, GDAL on a e.g. Chinese language Windows OS cannot open filenames in e.g. Polish.

This is fixable with, i believe, a surprisingly small set of additions to the VSI* file methods.  On some platforms, e.g. Mac OS X, it would not require any code at all, as the filesystem is always in UTF8.  That would be a far more interesting and useful addition, IMHO.

-Ben