[fpc-devel] Trying to understand the wiki-Page "FPC Unicode support"

[Michael Schnell]

On 11/26/2014 12:09 PM, Sven Barth wrote:
>  In Delphi (and FPC) CP_ACP corresponds by default with the current 
> system codepage (e.g. CP1252 on a German Windows). 

OK. So in Delphi XE (in Germany) String(CP_ACP) is the same as 
String(CP1252) but different from String without brackets which in turn 
is the same as String(CP_UTF16) ? Correct ?

> CP_UTF16 is not supported, because AnsiString only supports 1-Byte 
> character strings (and UTF-8 as the odd one) and not 2-Byte character 
> strings.

I still don't understand. The wiki article seems to suggest that it is 
about a type called "ANSIString" that features a dynamically settable 
"code page information". From discussions about Delphi and FPC, I only 
know a String type with a dynamically settable "code page information" 
that also features a dynamically settable "Bytes per Character 
information" and hence does support 1, 2 and 4 "Bytes per Character". 
(e.g. UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32).

> The difference to Delphi currently is that for FPC 
> String=AnsiString(CP_ACP) and for Delphi String=UnicodeString (aka 
> 2-Byte string).
>

I understand that you mean (e.g.) Delphi XE. But what version of FPC is 
"currently". Am I wrong assuming that in the svn we do have the 
"NewStrings" library that supports dynamical code-page *and* 
byte-per-character settings and hence supports e.g. CP1251, UTF-8, 
UTF-16, and UTF-32 ? So I seem to understand the meaning of 
String(CP1252), String(CP_UTF8), and String(CP_UTF16) (which seems do be 
the Delphi notation), but I seemingly don't get the exact meaning of 
"AnsiString(CP_ACP)" or "AnsiString(CP1251)"

In the end, what the definition of "String" without brackets is, might 
be due to a settable compiler option and/or the OS the compiler is set 
to create code for.

-Michael