[fpc-devel] Unicode support in RTL - Roadmap

[Michael Schnell]

> With plain strings, or Ansi strings, we have code that works today.  
> If you change any of those to UTF*, then code that uses things such as 
> SetLength, Length, stringvar[index], copy(string, index, count), pos 
> etc. cannot work 100% reliably.  You don't know what the programmer 
> wants when he says stringvar[3].....
That is what the two types ANSString and UTF8String suggest: if you use 
ANSIString, everything works fine as it always did, if you use 
UTF8String you need to take a look at what Unicode handling is all 
about. But unfortunately the compiler does not know the difference 
between the two types and can't do the appropriate conversions if 
necessary (e.g. when accessing the LCL that uses UTF8String) or call the 
appropriate functions (like for doing uppercase) according to what 
type(s) are used in an operation.

-Michael