[fpc-devel] Unicode and UTF8String

[Michael Schnell]

> For me, these attempts to make compiler do everything automatically sound
> like getting yet another typing saver. 
Maybe I am just being lazy, but it's not a typing saver but regarding 
the previous not-Unicode aware versions it's more a "preventer of a 
typing enhancer" :) .

OTOH it's not just the typing but to work with commonly used things that 
"just work" in other programming systems (including previous versions of 
FPC/Lazarus)  - like doing a "case" of a character type - the user 
programmer needs to learn about the internal encoding of Unicode text. I 
think this should be avoided. Pascal has been a great language for 
programming newcomers up till now. Simple things - like characters and 
strings - should just work (unless you explicitly need extended handling).

I don't suggest that there is a simple solution for this (other than not 
doing Unicode at all) but it's worth discussing.

-Michael