[fpc-devel] assign constant text to widestring

[Michael Schnell]

> If anybody say another thing "UTF8String" is just an alias for
> "ansistring" so they are exactly the same thing, but with different
> name which in my case I'm using to be clear in code where things are
> utf-8 encoded.
>   
I do know that in the current implementation "UTF8String" is just an 
alias for "ansistring". Of course this is why the compiler can't do any 
special tricks when assigning an utf8 coded value to a WideString.

So for a decent handling of UTF8, it is necessary to implement 
UTF8String as a basic type the compiler is aware of.

While the constant assignment problem is something we seem to see in any 
use of FPC, when doing Lazarus, the problem is even a lot more 
prominent, as the new LCL has been changed to use UTF8 instead of ANSI 
in it's user interface. Thus using any LCL function in a WideString 
based project uses the wrong (ANSI) default type conversion (-> no error 
message but wrong behavior as soon as - and only if - Unicode characters 
 > $7F are used.) .

(I have no idea why the Lazarus people decided to use utf8 instead of 
plain WideString for Unicode support. At least half the Lazarus projects 
are on Windows and same does have a WideString API so another type 
conversion is necessary in within the LCL, I don't know how the GTK API 
works.)

-Michael