[fpc-devel] Encoded AnsiString

[Michael Schnell]

On 01/07/2014 10:41 AM, Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
>
> We know this. But that is stage 2.
>
Sounds great !

Could you elaborate those plans ?

I fear that releasing  "stage 1" to the public might introduce another 
source of incompatibility.


Explanation: My horror-scenario when trying to convince my colleagues to 
port their (huge) "embedded" Delphi application to Lazarus:

  - They had it nicely working in pre-Unicode Delphi. It would be 
possible to port it to pre-Unicode Lazarus with decent effort.

  - It took them a huge effort to port it to Unicode enabled Delphi 
(including managing the glitches of multiple Delphi versions).

  - Current Unicode aware (UTF-8 enabled) Lazarus is compatible to 
neither of pre-Unicode Delphi nor to Unicode-aware Delphi, Hence using 
it for porting is out of question.

  - "just Delphi XE compatible" "Stage 1" might be a valid target, in 
case Lazarus is done appropriately. but I supposedly would recommend 
waiting for "Stage 2" as some of the porting effort might be done in 
vain regarding the goodies "Stage 2" promises. (Not regarding additional 
issues that might come up when migrating from "Stage 1" to "State 2".)

  - of course "Stage 2" would be most appropriate, but only if Lazarus 
follows accordingly,

(I suppose at that time the "natural" target arch will be ARM 64 :-) )
-Michael