Jcode - Japanese Charset Handler

# Jcode.pm - a successor to jcode.pl

[English][Japanese]

Last Modified:

by Dan Kogai

## Foreword

Virtually all Japanese perl coders must have used jcode.pl, a perl code that converts Japanese text from one char set or another. While jcode.pl has all the functinalities necessary, it has following problems;

### jcode.pl is not perl5--savvy

While it runs OK on perl5, you have to use typegrobs or references to give`jcode::convert()` right arguments. It doesn't look great to say

> `jcode::convert(\$str, 'jis', jcode::getcode(\$str), "z");
> print $str`;

Wouldn't it be nice if you can go like;

> `print jcode($str)->h2z->jis`;

to do the same?

### jcode.pl does not support MIME header

RFC1522 states that converting string to iso-2022-jp is not enought to put it into MIME header. You have to further convert the string with base64, then sandwitch that with `=?ISO-2022-JP?B?` and `?=`. Wouldn't it be nice if you can

> `$header = jcode($str)->encode_mime;`

### jcode.pl can't handle Unicode at all

I am not a big fan of Unicode but we have to admit the future is there...

## So here comes Jcode.pm

So I have written Jcode.pm. It has all features available on jcode.pl-2.10 PLUS

- Object-oriented approach on Japanese text handling
- mime header handling
- Unicode feature (UCS2 and UTF8)

Here is the documentation,`` `Jcode.html` Which is pod2html'd from`` `Jcode.pm`.

## Install

is easy.

1. `Make sure you have perl5. Jcode.pm is for perl5 only.`
2. `download` `Jcode-0.35.tar.gz`
3. `gunzip Jcode-*.tar.gz | tar xf -
   # or "tar zxf Jcode-0.10.tar.gz" if your tar is gnu`
4. `cd Jcode-*`
5. `perl Makefile.PL`
6. `make; make install`

That's it! I will upload this package as soon as field test is complete so as soon as that happens, it will be as easy as "`perl -MCPAN -e shell`" and "`install Jcode`".