[fpc-devel] FPC 2.3.1 seems a mixed mess with Unicode support

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Michael Schnell said:
> Marco van de Voort wrote:
> > 
> > http://www.stack/nl/~marcov/unicode.jpg
> > 
> 
> Obviously a huge Volume for a huge encoding scheme that really imposes a
> huge number of huge problems ;).

No, the description is about one-two hundred pages, the rest are tables that
show the standarized codepoints.

However that is still enough to realize that Unicode is not just about a few
chars more. It is also about fixing some other simplifications in the
computer-charset model. (like languages that compose characters out of
habit, and can't be easily fixed by adding the accented character like most
European languages)

These mean it never will be as simple as it was, unless you introduce
similar simplifications again. (but run into problems with several
languages). On the other hand, considering all this in all business code is
not workable either.

So it is wisest to keep general purpose libraries and tools (like FPC and
Lazarus) as compatible with the standard as reasonably possible, but
application builders that know their target audience can cut corners.