[fpc-devel] Unicode resource strings

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

Hi,

On 20 August 2012 15:43, Florian Klämpfl <florian at freepascal.org> wrote:
> Besides the resourcestrings I'am not aware of any unicodestring issues
> in the *compiler*. If there are, please report them to the issue tracker.


I have heard various back-and-forth comments about UnicodeString and
others, which makes me believe the compiler+unicode is still
incomplete, or at least not set in stone (understood as: don't really
use, because it could still change).

For example:

  * new mode 'delphiunicode' was introduced, but what about developers
wanting Unicode,
    but the project is a pure FPC project (it has no history of Delphi)?

  * Only in 'delphiunicode' mode is String = UnicodeString (I guess
the same issue as above)

  * All other modes String = AnsiString or ShortString based on {$H+}
or not. String is the most
    used type, and so too is the objfpc mode. So shouldn't String =
UnicodeString in FPC 2.8.0 release
    for mode objfpc too?

  * UnicodeString is always UTF-16 (so everything but Windows takes a
conversion penalty)!
    As far as I remember, that was good feedback from developers like
the idea of having
    UnicodeString as UTF-16 on windows and under Linux, MacOSX, Unix
etc it is UTF-8.

 * The above point would also alleviate the codepage compiler warning
under Linux/Unix/MacOS when
    delphiunicode mode (the only mode where String = UnicodeString).
Then again ALL text files I have
    even seen use UTF-8 as encoding, so even under Windows, source
code should be assumed UTF-8
    encoded. Java, C#, W3C (HTML & XML) etc all do that too.

  * Unicode & resource strings as Martin mentioned is not working yet.


There are lot of uncertanties, thus developers are reluctant to start
using (and testing it), because they might end up having to change
100's of thousands of lines of code later again.

-- 
Regards,
  - Graeme -


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