[fpc-devel] bug report 20473: Please add a directive to define string=utf8string

[Craig Peterson]

On 10/13/2011 4:36 AM, Marco van de Voort wrote:
>> Plus, isn't Embarcadero pushing FireMonkey anyway?
>
> I don't see it that way. I see FM as a Delphi PHP/3rd Rail/Prism like
> product, not as serious VCL contender. If I understood it correctly, it is
> mostly a sideproduct of internal efforts to port Embarcadero's non-Borland
> originating lines.

Why would you think that?  FireMonkey isn't mature enough to be usable 
yet, but it's definitely where future Delphi development will occur. 
After XE2 shipped Embarcadero laid off a bunch of VCL developers and 
announced they were growing their overseas teams (likely FireMonkey):

http://community.devexpress.com/blogs/ctodx/archive/2011/09/19/delphi-vcl-is-dead-long-live-firemonkey.aspx

ARM/iOS/Android support will require FireMonkey, and is their biggest 
growth opportunity.  Allen Bauer has also said FireMonkey apps should be 
able to work with Windows 8's Metro interface, which won't be true for 
VCL apps.


BTW, I wanted to point out, to anyone arguing for full Delphi 
compatibility, that on OS X Delphi's DefaultSystemCodePage and 
AnsiString(0) are *not* the system encoding _or_ UTF-8.  They're the 
Windows ANSI codepages that correspond to the system's locale (so, 1252 
for US/UK versions).  It's a weird gotcha, and means it's not safe to 
rely on AnsiString to communicate with system functions anymore.

-- 
Craig Peterson
Scooter Software