                     =====================================
                       Package "Date::Pcalc" Version 6.1
                     =====================================


                  Copyright (c) 1995 - 2009 by Steffen Beyer.
                             All rights reserved.


Tools:
------

You will find various tools in the "tools" subdirectory of this
distribution:

                            tools/compile.bat
                            tools/compile.pl
                            tools/compile.sh

                            tools/iso2pc.c
                            tools/pc2iso.c


compile.bat, compile.pl, compile.sh:
------------------------------------

These tools are simple shortcuts to reduce the amount of typing required
to compile one or more C sources where the use of a "Makefile" would be
an overkill.

They are an ideal place to lay down often-used compiler options, in order
to make manual compiles a little less cumbersome.

The first parameter of these tools is always the name of the source file
to be compiled, which will also be the name of the resulting output file.

This is usually the C source containing the "main()" function.

In the case of "compile.pl" and "compile.sh", the filename extension ".c"
is optional for this first parameter.

In the case of "compile.bat", the filename extension ".c" must NOT be
specified for this first parameter.

All other parameters are optional and are simply passed through to the
compiler, exactly as they are.

Usually, these parameters will be additional C sources to be compiled
and linked with the resulting output file, or additional compiler
options.

(The proper filename extension (".c", ".o" etc.) is mandatory for these
additional file names!)

When invoked without parameters, all three tools print a usage and exit.

Note that "compile.bat" assumes "cl" to be your (ANSI) C compiler,
"compile.pl" will use the same compiler as the one Perl itself has
been compiled with (or which Perl has been configured to use), and
"compile.sh" assumes "gcc".

If this is not what you have, adapt these little scripts accordingly!

You will most probably want to use these tools in order to compile the
program "cal.c" from the "examples" subdirectory of this distribution
(see the file "EXAMPLES.txt" in this distribution for details) or to
compile the "iso2pc.c" and "pc2iso.c" pair of filters (see the section
immediately below for more details).


iso2pc.c, pc2iso.c:
-------------------

This pair of tools is a complementary set of filters designed to convert
special characters (with ASCII codes ranging from 0x80 to 0xFF) from the
"ISO-Latin-1" (= "ISO-8859-1") character set to one of the "CP 850" PC
character sets (and vice-versa) in a REVERSIBLE way and WITHOUT LOSSES
of information.

This is useful on systems (such as MS-DOS or the FreeBSD console,
to name just two) which cannot display the ISO-Latin-1 character set.

Please look into these two files themselves for a more complete
documentation and a description of their various command line options.

In order to compile these two programs, you can use the "compile.*"
scripts from the "tools" subdirectory of this distribution (for a
description of these tools, see the first section in this document
above).

Simply change directory to the "tools" subdirectory and enter one
pair of the following commands:

                    % perl compile.pl iso2pc     (UNIX or Win32)
                    % perl compile.pl pc2iso     (UNIX or Win32)

                    % ./compile.sh iso2pc        (UNIX only)
                    % ./compile.sh pc2iso        (UNIX only)

                    % compile iso2pc             (MS-DOS/Windows only)
                    % compile pc2iso             (MS-DOS/Windows only)

Note that these two filters are not confined to UNIX or Windows NT/95
platforms, they also compile and run perfectly well on pure MS-DOS or
other Windows systems (or wherever a standard ANSI C compiler and
redirection of standard input and output are available)!

In order to be able to use these filters later more easily, you should
copy the resulting executables ("iso2pc" and "pc2iso" or "iso2pc.exe"
and "pc2iso.exe") to some directory in your search path; for example
to "/usr/local/bin" (UNIX) or "C:\DOS" (MS-DOS/Windows).

These two filters are included in this package in case you want to display
this module's output on a terminal which cannot display the ISO-Latin-1
character set, but uses the CP850 character set (MS-DOS, SCO console under
FreeBSD) or the Microsoft Windows character set instead.

For this, simply pipe this module's output through the "iso2pc" filter:

                    % perl myscript | iso2pc       #  for MS-DOS/SCO console
                    % perl myscript | iso2pc -win  #  for Windows

Note that the option "-rev" reverses this transformation:

                    % perl myscript | iso2pc      | iso2pc -rev
                    % perl myscript | iso2pc -win | iso2pc -win -rev

yields the original text!

Note also that "iso2pc -rev" is the same as "pc2iso" and vice-versa, i.e.,
"pc2iso -rev" is exactly the same as "iso2pc" - provided that you always
use the identical "-dos" (default) or "-win" flag setting, as shown above!


