[fpc-devel] new string - question on usage

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Sven Barth said:
> is that a new mode DelphiUnicode and a new modeswitch Unicodestrings 
> will be introduced which do exactly what Delphi 2009 has done: change 
> the default string to UnicodeString. But unlike Delphi this will be 
> possible on a per unit base. (That the RTL must be ready for something 
> like this is a different topic)

Not entirely. As said default string and rtl are linked, and linked in both
ways.  Forcing default string in dialect modes, makes it impossible to
compile the same piece of code in two different encodings using two rtls.

And that touches everything that inherits from the base classes that uses
"string" in a virtual method (or maybe everything protected/public even)
falls in that category.

Stuffing it in dialect modes is a habit because it worked with the
shortstring->ansistring transition, but in that time we also essentially
changed RTL from TP-like to delphi-like, and never really had to write
significant code that worked in both TP as delphi-like modes.