MatChar stores encoding, but it's inaccessible to the user

[nedtwigg]

MatChar has a configurable encoding field:

https://github.com/HebiRobotics/MatFileIO/blob/6b7cc2661a20523c3cbc3918977bc50d6e1127dd/src/main/java/us/hebi/matlab/mat/format/MatChar.java#L46-L51

But it's inaccesible from the public Char API:

https://github.com/HebiRobotics/MatFileIO/blob/6b7cc2661a20523c3cbc3918977bc50d6e1127dd/src/main/java/us/hebi/matlab/mat/types/Char.java

Do MAT-files really support multiple encodings, or can we hardcode UTF8? MatFileRw seems to only support UTF8.

https://github.com/diffplug/matfilerw/blob/2a4965c7eaf7f25c2153ec06404fa9b457c2098a/src/main/java/com/jmatio/types/MLChar.java

Adding degrees of freedom for future backward-compatibility seems tricky. Not a big deal though :)

[ennerf]

All of the Mat* are package private, but the custom encoding is accessible via Mat5.newChar(rows, cols, encoding). The default is UTF8.

The official Mat-File Format (page 15) added UTF16 and UTF32 encoding sometime a few years ago. UTF32 doesn't seem to actually be readable by MATLAB though.

MatFileRW implements reading UTF16/32, but it may not offer an option to serialize it.

https://github.com/diffplug/matfilerw/blob/1a73e4635eb02afa1db32ec94277945d93e41f7f/src/main/java/com/jmatio/io/MatFileReader.java#L1378

[ennerf]

Sorry, I think I may have misread the issue. Making the encoding be accessible via e.g. Char::getEncoding() seems reasonable.

The CharEncoding class should move the types package then, and the serialization should be separated out. So far I treated that more like an implementation detail that most people are unlikely to need.

[nedtwigg]

Roger. I'll submit a PR after #22 gets merged :)

[ennerf]

Resolved with #26