[fpc-devel] Unicode resourcestrings

[Martin Schreiber]

On Friday 29 February 2008 10.07:29 Daniël Mantione wrote:
> Op Fri, 29 Feb 2008, schreef Martin Schreiber:
> > On Friday 29 February 2008 09.25:18 Daniël Mantione wrote:
> >> Op Fri, 29 Feb 2008, schreef Martin Schreiber:
> >>> On Friday 29 February 2008 09.02:02 Daniël Mantione wrote:
> >>>> Op Fri, 29 Feb 2008, schreef Martin Schreiber:
> >>>>> Hi,
> >>>>> Is there a way in current FPC to have unicode or wide
> >>>>> resourcestrings? Thanks,
> >>>>
> >>>> Resourcestrings are ansistrings, so the answer is no. This is indeed a
> >>>> shortcoming in a widestring environment, the only solution is probably
> >>>> to encode them UTF-8.
> >>>
> >>> This works with utf-8 system encoding only -> not in an usual Windows
> >>> installation.
> >>
> >> There is utf8decode/utf8encode.
> >
> > The big advantage of resourcestrings is that they can be used like normal
> > string constants in the source. If I need to call utf8encode for every
> > used stringconstant I can use the MSEgui widestring stockcaption facility
> > instead.
> >
> >>> Are there plans to implement unicode resourcestrings?
> >>
> >> No, but this is just because you are the first one to ask. Could you
> >> make a proposal? Then we'll see how this can be implemented.
> >
> > Ideally from my point of view would be if the resourcestrings are stored
> > in utf-8 if the unit is compiled with -Fcutf8 and decoded by utf8decode
> > for widestring assignment on runtime independent of the system encoding.
>
> This has been discussed before. Automatic conversion to/from ansistrings
> will always be to/from system encoding. If you want another encoding than
> the system encoding you will have to do a manual conversion.
>
> For the compiler, a resourcestring has the same type as an ansistring, so
> no distinction can be made between resourcestrings/ansistrings.
>
Another suggestion:

implementation

resourcestrings
 resstring1 = 'abc';
 resstring2 = '1234';

resourcewidestrings
 resstring3 = 'abc';
 resstring4 = '1234';

procedure test;
var
 wstr1,wstr2: widestring;
begin
 wstr1:= resstring3; //no conversion
 wstr2:= resstring1; //uses system encoding to convert
end;

Martin