"SfR Fresh" - the SfR Freeware/Shareware Archive

Member "mysql-4.0.27/share/charsets/README" of archive mysql-4.0.27-win-src.zip:

As a special service "SfR Fresh" has tried to format the requested source page into HTML format using source code syntax highlighting with prefixed line numbers. Alternatively you can here view or download the uninterpreted source code file. That can be also achieved for any archive member file by clicking within an archive contents listing on the first character of the file(path) respectively on the according byte size field. 
    1 This directory holds configuration files which allow MySQL to work with
    2 different character sets.  It contains:
    3 
    4 *.conf
    5     Each conf file contains four tables which describe character types,
    6     lower- and upper-case equivalencies and sorting orders for the
    7     character values in the set.
    8 
    9 Index
   10     The Index file lists all of the available charset configurations.
   11 
   12     Each charset is paired with a number.  The number is stored
   13     IN THE DATABASE TABLE FILES and must not be changed.  Always
   14     add new character sets to the end of the list, so that the
   15     numbers of the other character sets will not be changed.
   16 
   17 Compiled in or configuration file?
   18     When should a character set be compiled in to MySQL's string library
   19     (libmystrings), and when should it be placed in a configuration
   20     file?
   21 
   22     If the character set requires the strcoll functions or is a
   23     multi-byte character set, it MUST be compiled in to the string
   24     library.  If it does not require these functions, it should be
   25     placed in a configuration file.
   26 
   27     If the character set uses any one of the strcoll functions, it
   28     must define all of them.  Likewise, if the set uses one of the
   29     multi-byte functions, it must define them all.  See the manual for
   30     more information on how to add a complex character set to MySQL.
   31 
   32 Syntax of configuration files
   33     The syntax is very simple.  Comments start with a '#' character and
   34     proceed to the end of the line.  Words are separated by arbitrary
   35     amounts of whitespace.
   36 
   37     For the character set configuration files, every word must be a
   38     number in hexadecimal format.  The ctype array takes up the first
   39     257 words; the to_lower, to_upper and sort_order arrays take up 256
   40     words each after that.