--
Provides an adapter layer between core routines for converting to and
from UTF8 and other encodings. In essence, a way to give multiple
existing Unicode modules a single common interface so you don't have to
know the underlaying implementations to do simple UTF8 to-from other
character set encoding conversions. As such, it wraps the
Unicode::String, Unicode::Map8, Unicode::Map and Jcode modules in a
standardized and simple API.
This also provides general character set conversion operation based on
UTF8 - it is possible to convert between any two compatible and
supported character sets via a simple two step chaining of conversions.
As with most things Perlish - if you give it a few big chunks of text to
chew on instead of lots of small ones it will handle many more
characters per second.
By design, it can be easily extended to encompass any new charset
encoding conversion modules that arrive on the scene.
