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The recode reference manual

2.3 Contributions and bug reports

Even being the recode author and current maintainer, I am no specialist in charset standards. I only made recode along the years to solve my own needs, but felt it was applicable for the needs of others. Some FSF people liked the program structure and suggested to make it more widely available. I often rely on recode users suggestions to decide what is best to be done next.

Properly protecting recode about possible copyright fights is a pain for me and for contributors, but we cannot avoid addressing the issue in the long run. Besides, the Free Software Foundation, which mandates the GNU project, is very sensible to this matter. GNU standards suggest that we stay cautious before looking at copyrighted code. The safest and simplest way for me is to gather ideas and reprogram them anew, even if this might slow me down considerably. For contributions going beyond a few lines of code here and there, the FSF definitely requires employer disclaimers and copyright assignments in writing.

When you contribute something to recode, please explain what it is about. Do not take for granted that I know those charsets which are familiar to you. Once again, I'm no expert, and you have to help me. Your explanations could well find their way into this documentation, too. Also, for contributing new charsets or new surfaces, as much as possible, please provide good, solid, verifiable references for the tables you used(1).

Many users contributed to recode already, I am grateful to them for their interest and involvement. Some suggestions can be integrated quickly while some others have to be delayed, I have to draw a line somewhere when time comes to make a new release, about what would go in it and what would go in the next.

Please send suggestions, documentation errors and bug reports to recode-bugs@iro.umontreal.ca or, if you prefer, directly to pinard@iro.umontreal.ca, François Pinard. Do not be afraid to report details, because this program is the mere aggregation of hundreds of details.