Show an error when multibyte string functions are missing.

[Zegnat]

NoNonsenseForum is pretty good at warning people when their servers do not support running it. E.g. Apache version, PHP version, permissions… I think people should be warned when multibyte string functions are unavailable as well.

The transliterator has many layers of dependencies, but other parts are completely reliant on mb_-functions.

Sparked by NNFNewbie over at the forum.

[Kroc]

There'll never be an end to the crazy backwards server configurations out there :) Noted.

[Zegnat]

Although it is available from PHP 4.0.6 onward, it has never actually been enabled by default:

mbstring is a non-default extension. This means it is not enabled by default. You must explicitly enable the module with the configure option.

Who knew‽ Every NNF bug report helps me learn a new thing about PHP 😉

[Kroc]

You know that phrase "If it's stupid, but it works, it's not stupid"? That's PHP. It makes no sense, but it does the job well.