The xml::um module provides methods to convert utf-8 strings to any xml encoding that xml::encoding supports. it creates mapping routines from the .xml files that can be found in the maps/ directory in the xml::encoding distribution. note that the xml::encoding distribution does install the .enc files in your perl directory, but not the.xml files they were created from. that's why you have to specify $encdir as in the synopsis.

this implementation uses the xml::encoding class to parse the .xml file and creates a hash that maps utf-8 characters (each consisting of up to 4 bytes) to their equivalent byte sequence in the specified encoding. note that large mappings may consume a lot of memory!

future implementations may parse the .enc files directly, or do the conversions entirely in xs (i.e. c code).