[bug-gnu-libiconv] Why iconv is locale dependent?

[tomas]

Hi

First of all, I'd like to thank you all for maintaining libiconv for 
free.  It is a great job!

I am writing you because I couldn't understand why iconv (and libiconv 
also, I suppose) is locale-dependent.  My test is the following bash 
script:

#!/bin/bash

declare LANG=
declare LC_ALL=
iconv -f UTF-8 -t ASCII//TRANSLIT <<EOF
tomás
EOF

declare LANG=en_US.UTF-8
declare LC_ALL=
iconv -f UTF-8 -t ASCII//TRANSLIT <<EOF
tomás
EOF

Since iconv is a tool for converting between encodings why is it 
dependent of locale configuration?

Regards,
Tomás