[fpc-devel] Unicodestring branch, please test and help fixing

[Ivo Steinmann]

Anton Kavalenka schrieb:
> Florian Klaempfl wrote:
>> I've continued to work on support of an unicodestring type in fpc.
>> It's currently in an svn branch at:
>> http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/fpc/branches/unicodestring
>> and will be merged later to trunk. The unicodestring type is a ref.
>> counted utf-16 string. On non-windows, widestring is mapped to this
>> type. If you're interested in unicode support please test, give
>> feedback here and submit fixes.
>>
>> An existing working copy of trunk can be switched to this branch by
>> cd fpc
>> svn switch http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/fpc/branches/unicodestring
>> and back with
>> svn switch http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/fpc/trunk
>> _______________________________________________
>> fpc-devel maillist  -  fpc-devel at lists.freepascal.org
>> http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
>>
> The Pascal huge strings always annoy me.
> Since - it is IMPLICIT automatic object with set of overloaded
> methods, length and reference count fields etc hidden from developer.
>
> In near future we geat a Zoo of the strings:
> AnsiString, WideString, UnicodeString, ShortString, PWideChar, PChar
> Some of them with encoding field.
>
> Why not to make it EXPLICIT object
>
> s:=TCoolFPCString.Create('Test');
> s2:=TCoolFPCString.Create('Проверка'); //UTF8 encoded constant
> s.asUtf8+=s2;
>
> SetWindowTextW(WinHandle,s.AsUnicodeString); // i explicitly say - get
> me wide string and DO not any compiler magic
>
> if (s1.length=length(s2))... // generic runtime function length
> returns the property of cool object
>
> s1.AcquireLock // prevent other threads acccess
> s1.Clear;
> s1.LoadFromResource(n_ReasourceId); // just use GNU gettext
> s1.LoadTranslationFromResource(n_resID,'be_BY');
> s1.ReleaseLock // allow other thread access
>
> Anyway I just can subclass standard string and get a new functionality
> with reachness of availabel fields and methods.
>
>
> FPC supports operators - so there is lots of way to represent the
> string, assign the string, load it from resource.
> Make it thread-safe at implementation level but not at compiler level.
> Standard string, unicode string , ansistring, widestring can be
> implemented as wrappers along this object.
> It seems like in mseGUI it is done.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> fpc-devel maillist  -  fpc-devel at lists.freepascal.org
> http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
>   
I fully agree with you. I would like the object oriented way of strings
also - but I stopped asking for that ;) There are a lot of advantages
over the small amount of disadvantages. Of course I dont like this one:

S := TString.Create('');

But a built in class TString that is managed by the compiler.



PS : Maybe i'm a littlebit more up to date about todays concepts of
object oriented languages - maybe because I know him personally
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Meyer
There were a lot of interesting discussions, etc...  altough I dont like
Eiffel :)

and also this guy was one of my profs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth

greetings