  We elaborate the inclusive production of single heavy-flavored hadrons in
e^+e^- annihilation at next-to-leading order in the general-mass
variable-flavor-number scheme. In this framework, we determine non-perturbative
fragmentation functions for D^0, D^+, and D^{*+} mesons by fitting experimental
data from the Belle, CLEO, ALEPH, and OPAL Collaborations, taking dominant
electroweak corrections due to photonic initial-state radiation into account.
We assess the significance of finite-mass effects through comparisons with a
similar analysis in the zero-mass variable-flavor-number scheme. Under Belle
and CLEO experimental conditions, charmed-hadron mass effects on the phase
space turn out to be appreciable, while charm-quark mass effects on the
partonic matrix elements are less important.
