[Pdx-pm] failed tests on module install

[Randall Hansen]

folks ~

i guess i've been lucky, spoiled by debian, or not adventurous enough, but
it's not 'til today that i've encountered failed tests on perl module
installation.  old hat for most of you, no doubt, but it's got me all in a
tizzy.

several modules are failing, but here's one detailed example:  in
HTML::Parser's 'headparser.t', test #3 fails.  the point of failure is
comparing one string written into and then parsed from an HTML file:

	&Aring være eller å ikke være

with another string:

	Å være eller å ikke være

these should be equivalent, for properly-parsed HTML.  the test works fine
on my debian, freebsd, and win2k machines, but is failing under RH8 (using
another OS for this install isn't an option).  the text returned from the
file is very similar, but it's not correctly reading the 'æ'.  if this test
were the only one failing i'd probably force the install and ask around
HTML::Parser land to see if anyone had any ideas (or maybe it's RH's unicode
handling, or something else unrelated to the module, but that's all beside
my main point).

the main point is - what i'm installing is Bundle::Slash, and dozens of
tests on numerous modules are failing (fewer than 1% of the total subtests,
but that's still a large number).  i barely know where to start, but what i
/don't/ want to do is manually tear apart each of these tests (as above) and
hunt down the cause - it would take a week.

is there a better option?  it's likely that few suggestions are too newb-ish
to be helpful :)

TIA,

the other randall