[fpc-devel] Resourcestrings and encodings

[Jonas Maebe]

Hi,

In January 2014, the compiler started using a new format to export 
resource string (.rsj instead of .rst). The main advantage was that this 
format exported the resourcestrings as UTF-16.

Unfortunately, this did not work properly if a source file's code page 
was set to UTF-8. "Fortunately", due to another a bug in rstconv, on 
Unix platforms (and other systems with codepage ISO-8859-1), the 
generated resource files did contain proper UTF-8 data in the end.

Last week, we got a bug report about this (see the "Resourcestrings in 
FPC 3.0" thread on the fpc-pascal list). Normally, this would have been 
way too late to still fix for the next release. However, given the 
severity and the fact that this is a regression for previously working 
functionality, we will probably include it. This means that there 
definitely will be an FPC 3.0 RC2 before the final release.

However, I would already like to ask everyone that uses resource strings 
to check FPC trunk r31881 or later with their program to ensure it still 
works correctly, and also try the changed rstconv utility. See 
http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=28717#c86146 for information 
about its default behaviour and new feature.

This is mainly to ensure it doesn't take another 1.5 years before the 
bugs are found, and to avoid the need for an RC3.

Thanks,


Jonas