[fpc-devel] Encoded AnsiString

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Jonas Maebe schrieb:

> I'm inclined to add a global boolean variable to the system unit that
> allows changing this behaviour so that it uses CP_UTF8 instead in
> such cases (defaulting to false, for Delphi compatibility). In
> practice, setting it to true shouldn't cause problems even with
> virtually all Delphi, as routines that work with rawbytestring should
> be able to handle any code page anyway.

Sounds good, but I fear complications because such a global variable 
will affect also library behaviour. When UTF-8 is used in Lazarus or for 
filenames, and this encoding doesn't work in combination with string 
literals (CP_ACP?), then the Delphi default is not acceptable. When 
string literals are assumed as UTF-8, they won't work with strings of 
CP_ACP or other encodings, for the same reason.

I'd restrict strict Delphi compatibility to string=UnicodeString, if 
ever, and leave the UTF-8 RTL and LCL unaffected by the Delphi flaw. But 
what's Delphi compatibility worth without a UTF-16 LCL?

DoDi