[fpc-devel] natural unicode support for WinNT via UTF-8

[Yury B.]

Hello fpc-devel,

    If there were full unicode support (TCHAR analogue) the life under Win32 would be simpler $)
    Two RTLs should be for Win32, one compiled for ANSI/DBCS and the other for
    UNICODE UCS-2 (WinNT), where a special type,
    say TUniString is AnsiString in the first version and
    UnicodeString in the second version.
    What do you think of it?

    I need a unicode GUI and command line processing in my Win32 programms for
    they deal with a number of languages and intended for WinNT/2k/XP
    with natural unicode support.

    When I say UNICODE support I don't mean automatic translation between 8-bit
    and 16-bit strings but calling *W API functions and using Unicode strings in
    parameters to file io, parameters etc. the rest functions like ToUTF8(), FromUTF8()
    can be provided as a separate unit.

    Under Linux the life is easier because one can set UTF-8 for system encoding
    and use AnsiStrings or char* in their applications but under WinXX one
    have to use wchar_t and *W variants of Win32 API functions :(
    and maintain two versions of libraries...

    Even better solution - to treat AnsiStrings as UTF-8 when UNICODE_UTF8 is defined, but convert UTF8 to WideString on system calls (Win API). But this can cause performance hits...

    Though to treat AnsiStrings as UTF-8 is the best solution
    regarding compatibility, i.e. no need to rewrite FCL etc. as
    AnsiString or String types can be used to store UTF-8 strings.

    As soon as I finish downloading FPC 1.9.8 sources I'll try to
    edit system unit for Win32 to understand UNICODE_UTF8 define and
    to build a unit using *W (widechar Win32 functions) and Utf8
    conversion routines (MultiByteToUnicode() etc.)... So that
    file/console IO and parameters (paramstr) functions deal with
    Win32 API widechar functions and convert between UTF8 and UCS-2...


    Does anybody work on this issue too? Please comment on it, maybe
    there's already something in the sources that I am not aware of?



-- 
Best regards,
 Yury                          mailto:ybxsoft at tut.by