Regcode char sets update, Mar 7 2000. 


WHAT'S BEEN DONE:
 regcode_charsets.[ch] has been created to replace MapString.[ch] as the proper way to canonicalize registeree names before passing to generator/verifier. The source is checked into Perforce and supports most of the important character sets. 

 The "regutil" command line utility has been created to replace "reg-gen" and "reg-check". Binaries for Solaris, Windows and Linux will soon be in //depot/regcode/release/... These should NOT be distributed though, they're just development tools and to support the registration web pages. 

 //depot/regcode/readme.txt describes how things should work (except we haven't figured out policy codes/month #'s yet).

 The public registration web pages were fixed around the 1st of March to fold accented characters rather than ignore them.


WHAT'S LEFT TO DO:
 Release the next MacOS standard Eudora build which now correctly handles accented chars. 

 Fix public registration web page so the email it sends has the proper character set (use HTML entities) and attachment encoding (b64).

 Fix the MacOS updater, ESD, box, etc., installers that self register to use the new regcode_charsets mapping. They are currently mapping using PSMapString which does not work for the MacOS character set.

 Fix the Win standard build to use regcode_charsets with the Windows 1252 code page so that characters like  are handled correctly.

 Fix the Win updater, ESD, Box self-registering installers to use regcode_charsets with the Windows 1252 code page so that characters like  are handled correctly.

 Finish the internal-use reg code generation web page as the way for tech support or others to generate ad hoc reg codes. 

 Consider reissuing reg codes for 1200 people in the database that have accented characters in their names ignored.


TIPS:
 If a user has trouble registering ask them to try their name (e.g., John Bgbt) first without any accent marks (John Bigbootay) and then with the accented characters removed (John Bgbt). 

 If this doesn't work (in particular if they're from central/eastern Europe) they should be re-registered using a name with non-accented characters (John Bigbootay).


WHAT'S UNRESOLVED:
 It seems that browsers don't tell the server what character set is in use, thus if the user has switched their browser to something other than US-ASCII, ISO8859-1 or the Windows Character Set, we're likely to have a problem - see tips for work around.

 If Eudora is running on Mac/Win outside of Western Europe or the Americas they may have trouble with accented characters - see tips. If this becomes a big problem we can address it.

 We're totally hosed for non-Latin character sets like Japanese, Arabic and Cyrillic. If this becomes a big problem we can address it.

