[R-sig-Geo] About dealing 2-byte code characters(ex. Japanese) in new maptools

[Hisaji ONO]

Hello, Professor Bivand.

 Thank you for updating maptools.

 I've tried to use this.

 And I've noticed this couldn't deal with Japanese
Characters, which were included dbase files.


 Former version(0.3-8),

> raildb<-maptools:::dbf.read("/railway.dbf")
> raildb
                                        NAME
1                               ＪＲ横須賀線
2                               ＪＲ横須賀線

 In Japanese WinXP environment, these characters were
displayed correctly.


 However latest version(0.4-8),


> raildb<-read.dbf("/railway.dbf",as.is=TRUE)

> raildb$NAME[1:2]
[1] "&#8218;i&#8218;q‰。&#144;{‰&ecirc;&#144;&uuml;"    
   
[2] "&#8218;i&#8218;q‰。&#144;{‰&ecirc;&#144;&uuml;" 

 These aren't Japanese.

 How come?


 Regards.