Summary on Re: [fpc-pascal] Unicode file routines proposal

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Tue, 1 Jul 2008, Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 9:56 AM, Florian Klaempfl <florian at freepascal.org> wrote:
> > Because using utf-16 on linux is very unnatural, same for utf-8 on
> > windows. Platforms like go32 even don't have any unicode. Coding
> > platform independent but fast applications is really ugly having fixed
> > types.
> 
> Well, then you mean that it requires conversion in some platforms
> rather then it not being cross-platform.
> 
> What I am trying to say is that the new proposed systems will be
> harder to use, trying to please everyone everywhere with a perceived
> performance gain without any indication that this gain will actually
> be significant in real world applications. It uses an exotic solution,
> never tested before.
> 
> The speed difference in LCL-Qt apps and LCL-Gtk apps is negletible,
> althougth we do string conversions when using Qt. Because the
> manipulation of strings is usually not a bottleneck.
> 
> And the ansi routines will not be removed, they will be kept for those
> really interrested in speed.
> 
> I for one prefer simplicity and easy of use to speed.

I don't see what is difficult about Florians proposition.
On the contrary, it is the simplest possible solution,
and quite elegant in my eyes.

For the LCL/fpGUI/MSEGui programmers, nothing changes,
you can even throw away your own conversion routines.
You need only a single call just prior to passing a string
to the OS/GUI system: ForceEncoding(). No ifdefs needed,
all is transparant.

Michael.