NAME

       md_src_plugins_iconv_READMEREADME
        -

       • infos = Information about iconv plugin is in keys below

       • infos/author = Markus Raab elektra@libelektra.org

       • infos/licence = BSD

       • infos/needs =

       • infos/provides = conv

       • infos/placements = postgetstorage presetstorage

       • infos/description = Converts values of keys between charsets

       This plugin is a filter plugin that converts between different character encodings.

   Purpose
       Consider a user insisting on a latin1 character encoding because of some old application.
       All other users already use, for example, UTF-8. For these users, the configuration files
       are encoded in UTF-8. So we need a solution for the user with latin1 to access the key
       database with proper encoding.

       On the other hand, contemplate an XML file which requires a specific encoding. But the
       other key databases work well with the users encoding. So a quick fix for that backend is
       needed to feed that XML file with a different encoding.

       Iconv plugin provides a solution for both scenarios. It converts between many available
       character encodings. With the plugin’s configuration the user can change the from and to
       encoding. The default values of the plugin configuration are: from encoding will be
       determined at run time. to encoding is UTF-8.

       Parameters:

       • to is per default UTF-8, to have unicode configuration files

       • from is per default the users locale

       Note that for writing the configuration from and to is swapped. A key database that
       requires a specific encoding can make use of it. To sum up, every user can select a
       different encoding, but the key databases are still properly encoded for anyone.

   Example
       For example ~/.config/iconv.ini should be latin1, but all users have UTF-8 settings:

           kdb mount iconv.ini /example/iconv ini iconv from=UTF-8,to=ISO-8859-1
           file ~/.config/iconv.ini             # iconv.ini: ISO-8859 text
           kdb get user/example/iconv/a     # converts ISO-8859 to UTF-8
           kdb set user/example/iconv/a öäß # converts UTF-8 to ISO-8859