[fpc-devel] Unicode support (yet again)

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 14/09/2011 17:02, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
> Many  users still  want simple  string handling,  with direct  mapping
> between logical and physical chars (SBCS). This is not possible at all
> with UTF-8, while UTF-16 works fine with the BMP, at least.

What rubbish! The only "utf-8 limit" is  that the current FPC and Delphi
RTL's  don't cater  for it  due  to the  legacy ANSI  support that  came
before.

But  then   you  also   forgot  that   most  string   manipulation  that
requires  individual "characters"  normally  process  such strings  from
left-to-right,  so again  there  is  NO problem  doing  that with  UTF-8
encoded strings. I've done enough UTF-8 string manipulation to know.


> (platform  dependent) RTL  conventions,  but it  affects the  standard
> components (string lists...)  in the FCL, and the  other components in
> the LCL.

Please give a concrete example  where using platfrom dependent encodings
(eg: UnicodeString  =  UTF-8  on  Linux, but  UTF-16  on  Windows)  will
cause  problems? I really  cannot see  any issues  here, only  positives
like  better  performance   for  each  platform  due  to   no  need  for
auto-conversions.


> Here again  the average user  will prefer UTF-16  component libraries,
> compatible  with his  own code,  while more  experienced users  may be
> happier with the current UTF-8 libraries.

What the  hell has "experience"  got to  do with the  preference between
UTF-8  and UTF-16? To  the developer  (and more  so to  the end-user)  a
Unicode string should  act like any other  Unicode string. What encoding
is used to represent "hello world" shouldn't even come into question.


> English (ASCII)  users also may prefer  UTF-8, as long as  they do not
> have to (or want to) deal with strings in foreign languages.

Rubbish  once again! Our  applications  use UTF-8,  I  have no  problems
writing application that support multiple  foreign language - as long as
those  languages are  left-to-right (I  don't understand  RTL languages,
so  can't  comment). Neither  have  my users  any  problems  using  such
application. Hell, they  don't even  know what Unicode  is, or  what the
word Encoding means -  they just see it as text  on the screen. And that
is how it should be.


Regards,
  - Graeme -

-- 
fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/