[fpc-devel] Unicode resource strings

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

Hi,

On 21 August 2012 09:32, Mattias Gaertner <nc-gaertnma at netcologne.de> wrote:
>
> IMO unicodestring should be the same on all platforms, because
> otherwise the character size switches per platform,


Please define "character" in your sentence above. Are you referring to
a Unicode codepoint, or a "printable character"? If the first, then 4
bytes is always sufficient on all platforms.

> The compiler already supports an UTF8String, right?
> If yes, then some functions can use UTF8String, some UnicodeString
> (=UTF-16) and the compiler magic will convert automatically.

How I would wish for FPC to stop this ridiculous ambiguity that Delphi
enforces. Can't we just introduce UTF8String and UTF16String types. By
the name they clearly state what encoding the hold.  A UnicodeString
type should mean any Unicode encoding, and defaults to UTF-8 under
*nix type systems and UTF-16 under Windows. Thus no performance loss
on any platform. After all the name "Unicode String" does not imply
UTF-16 only - as per the Unicode Standards.


> The difficult decision is what functions and types should use UTF-8
> and what UTF-16. This may depend on the platform.

As I said, if you use the correct default encoding on each platform
for the UnicodeString type, the problem you mention will not be a
problem any more. Linux will use UTF-8 by default, so file handling
and API was will work without any conversion.

The whole RTL should use UnicodeString type, where the encoding is as
I described above.


> I guess there is no good solution for TStrings. Whatever string type is
> chosen, some programs will suffer.

Why will some suffer? Simply default UnicodeString to the correct
encoding on each platform, and no performance issues and no
unnecessary conversions will occur.


-- 
Regards,
  - Graeme -


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