Re: [Firebird-devel] Case-insensitive collations & collate PT_BR

[Artur A. <ar...@ar...>]

> As I told you, some years ago there was a money collection in Brazil
> (done by Paulo Henrique Albanez and announced in my discussion list)
> to pay Dave for the work. I think this money is still here, waiting
> for someone. But I think the destination of the money must be decided
> by everyone who contributed with it... I think Paulo (PHA) or Artur
> Anjos can give you more details. I'm copying this message to them.

Here is the story:

The money was collected to pay Dave. When we finish the collect, Dave 
was not available to do the job. Paulo Henrique, the person who's job 
whas just to collect the money, feel that it wasn't ok for him to be 
with the money, so he did the job himself. :-)
A great job.

Then the problem arrived: to complete all tasks, Paulo need to make some 
specific fixes t collate PT_BR that will not work with other collates. 
That's a Firebird limitation, as discussed here, but Paulo wasn't aware 
of this until the time the problem appears. That's the reason that the 
Firebird project refuses to integrate the new collate in the tree.

Source code and binarys are available from CFLP and any one can use it. 
CFLP has taken the responsability to make available code and binaries 
for each time the Firebird project releases a new version. It's 
available for Fb 1 and 1.5, and we will try to make it available for 
next versions.

I have a talk with Nickolay in Fulda about this subject. He explain to 
me the exact problem that we have to solve, as he already explained in 
this list:

"
It is expected that at some point collations will be converted to
streamed interface to work correctly with BLOBs.
So unfortunately using string_to_key will not help in generic case when
streamed filter templates (StartsEvaluator<>, LikeEvaluator<>,
ContainsEvaluator<>, etc) are used to implement pattern matching.
"

So, we divide this task in two tasks:

For collate PT_BR, we are working now to have a version without the 
fixes, standard with Firebird code, that could be integrated in the 
tree. That will give you, Brazilian users, the task done. With, of 
course, all the limitations that all collations have in Firebird.

At CFLP, we are available to take the task to convert collations to 
streamed interface, and Nickolay already told us that he will help us 
giving us the directions to follow. But one thing at the time: for now, 
we are testing the new collate, and we don't have time to do everything.

Regarding the money: the money isn't there 'waiting for someone'. All 
the people that contributed decided to give Paulo the money. He really 
did the job. But Paulo didn't accept this situation, because the code 
isn't integrated in the tree (one of the target's when we did the 
collect). But that's his problem now: the money belongs to him, so it's 
up to him to decide what to do with it.

Artur