[fpc-devel] Russian locale information not compatible with FPC locale variables

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Daniël Mantione
<daniel.mantione at freepascal.org> wrote:
>> Boost the usage of Unicode in FPC that would boost the usage of FPC
>> itself. Unicode is one of the most demanded features (beside cross platform,
>> 64bit support, etc) in Delphi since Delphi 7 (2001?). Yet, CodeGear never
>> fulfill it until Tiburon.
>
> Why would it boost FPC usage?

Like Bee said... The time frame has come and gone!  If you read the
delphi.non-technical newsgroup you would notice that quite a few
Delphi developers use FPC for backend features. Linux services etc...
They also talked about FPC having 64bit support.  If FPC didn't worry
to much about compatibility and instead implemented Unicode support
long ago like it could have, it might just have boosted FPC usage,
beating Borland to the punch by about 7 years.  FPC could have
attracted and converted more Delphi developers...

Yes it's always easy to say that with the benefit of hindsight, but
it's not far from the truth.  Our company is a case in point. We saw
features in FPC that we would like and Borland was going in the wrong
direction for us.  At that point in time (2-3 years ago) there was no
mention of when Delphi would ever support those features. FPC seemed
the obvious choice to us, so we moved - an still with no regrets. :-)
Yes it costed use some time and effort to port our code and required
tools, but it's still been worth it. We can now target different
platforms, 32/64bit systems.... Our next evolution for our products
are non-English speaking countries, hence the Unicode requirements.

But the time frame to beat Delphi with Unicode support has passed...  :-(


Regards,
 - Graeme -


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