[fpc-devel] Re: Unicode and Lazarus

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 1:50 PM, Michael Schnell <mschnell at lumino.de> wrote:
>
>> Compiler support for a unicode string is not enough for the LCL.
>> As long as base classes like TStrings uses ansistrings, the LCL must use a
>> string type, that does no conversion.
>
> Of course you are right that the RTL needs to be made up accordingly. Maybe
> TStrings and friends are needed in multiple versions.

Yes, I would have thought that's a given. All base classes need
unicode support where appropriate - that includes TStrings.


> Using a string type that dynamically can be used top hold multiple encodings
> (as discussed here, too) sounds nice, if it does not result in too slow code
> (due to the necessity of checking for the coding with any operation).

At the moment, I think first supporting Unicode is the most important
step. Performance tuning comes afterwards. That how it seems to work
now and I don't see a problem with that. FPC generates assembler code,
and it's still an ongoing process in tuning the performance of the
assembler code. I remember how things where tweaked a while back with
all the language shootout tests.

We can implement Unicode shootout tests later. ;-)


Regards,
  - Graeme -


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