[fpc-devel] Unicode and UTF8String

[Florian Klaempfl]

Mattias Gaertner schrieb:
> On Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:36:23 +0100
> Florian Klaempfl <florian at freepascal.org> wrote:
> 
>> [...] Martin Friebe schrieb:
>>> I can not see how I can interpret RtlString[1]. If the result is
>>> bigger than 128, then I must know what type it is. If it is ANSI,
>>> it is a single byte char. If it is utf8, it is a sub-codepoint
>>> which will be part of a codepoint.
>>> If it is widestring, well yes, here breaks my assumption that
>>> RtlString[1] returns a byte.... ouch
>>>
>> I see this as a theoretic consideration. Please give a real world (!)
>> code example when this causes a problem.
> 
> Can you give a real world example where a different RTLString for
> each platform solves a problem?

It solves for example the problem that there are platforms where no
unicode support is available or desired and it avoids unneeded
conversions. I'd be fine using utf-16 on all platforms :)

> 
>  
>> If you assign the result of an rtl function to an rtlstring, this
>> means you don't care about the type of rtlstring[1] or the knowledge,
>> that it's type is rtlchar is enough for you. If you assign it to an
>> ansistring/widestring whatever, you know what you get.
> 
> What string type will be TStrings.Items and the many other strings in
> the classes.pp?

Not yet decided though I'd make them RTLString as well.