cpstrnew branch (was Re: [fpc-devel] Freepascal 2.4.0rc1 released)

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Martin Schreiber said:
> > > http://wiki.freepascal.org/FPC_Unicode_support
> > >
> > > (saying "Upcoming Delphi release codenamed Tiburon will natively support
> > > Unicode")
> > >
> > > still valid ?
> > >   
> > At least the branch link is valid :)
> > 
> [...]
> 
> Will there be a simple reference counted WideString on all platforms as the 
> current FPC UnicodeString is?

Why does there need to be a widestring type if there is unicodestring? Is
there some reason why unicodestring wouldn't work for you? IIRC you already
have a MSESTring alias that you use everywhere, so it should be a matter of
just changing what the alias points to depending on compiler version?

> WideString could be reference counted on all platforms and the current not 
> reference counted Windows WideString could be renamed to OLEString in order 
....

This would break a lot of Delphi and COM code, and is IMHO not smart. If for
some reason the old widestring implemention needs to continue (it is
redundant if unicodestring is there?), it should get a different identifier.