Re: [htdig] doc2html.pl -- "magic" issue with perl version???

[Gilles D. <gr...@sc...>]

According to Duane Winner:
> I am trying to determine wether or not an issue that we are having with
> doc2html.pl is related to different versions of perl or not.
> 
> We are successfully using doc2html on a FreeBSD (4.9-RELEASE) box that
> has Perl version 5.005_03.
> 
> If I type:
> -su-2.05b# /usr/local/etc/htdig/doc2html.pl "/usr/local/data/8web.doc"
> "application/msword"
> 
> It returns to me html output just as it should.
> 
> But on a RedHat 9 box this does not work. This box has Perl v5.8.0. With
> doc2html configured the same way, I get:
> !       UNABLE to convert
> 
> 
> One of our software engineers took a look at this and this what he
> found:
> "The comparison at about line 405 fails because the "magics" do not
> match.  The mimi types do match."
> 
> Is this an issue with Perl and the different versions we are running? Or
> is it something else? Something we missed, possibly?
> 
> Thanks for any input.

I believe there are issues with Perl on Red Hat 9, with all sorts of
regular expressions failing, when using a UTF-8 based locale, as Red Hat
9 configures by default.  Red Hat tried to patch Perl to support UTF-8
character sets, but obviously didn't get it quite right.

If you try setting LANG=en_US or any non-utf8 locale, before running htdig
(or rundig), then I expect doc2html.pl will work better.  htdig doesn't
use the LANG variable itself, as it uses the "locale" configuration
attribute instead (see http://www.htdig.org/attrs.html#locale),
but it will pass it on to any program it calls up, including the
external_parsers.

-- 
Gilles R. Detillieux              E-mail: <gr...@sc...>
Spinal Cord Research Centre       WWW:    http://www.scrc.umanitoba.ca/
Dept. Physiology, U. of Manitoba  Winnipeg, MB  R3E 3J7  (Canada)