[fpc-pascal] Warning not to use the "String" type with FPC 3.x

[Tomas Hajny]

On Mon, May 9, 2016 13:10, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> On 2016-05-09 11:47, Jonas Maebe wrote:


Hello Graeme,

>> Having opinions available is not the issue. Getting people to completely
>> implement all of their opinions so that we can compare all options in
>> practice,
>
> And we all know that will never happen in FPC. Neither does it happen
> [implementing every possible alternative to a problem] in any other
> software product or company I've ever come across. So if you think that
> is a solution for FPC, I fear you are mistaken.
>
> Again, real-world solution have already been presented to you [the FPC
> team]. Java, C# and Delphi 2009+ and many others. Don't tell me they all
> got it wrong (with there much larger development teams and resources).
> Simply switch the RTL to UnicodeString (UTF-16) everywhere and be done.
> Yes you might take a popularity hit for a while with some, but there is
> NO way you can please everybody. Somebody will always have an issue. And
> like I said, if they don't like the new direction, fork the project and
> do your own thing, or stick with FPC 2.6.4 and maintain it yourself.

Regardless from other decisions, we all have already known that new
UnicodeString implementations (or at least checks of full UnicodeString
support without any changes apart from replacing 'string' with
'UnicodeString') are necessary for string handling in the RTL for quite
some time. Nevertheless, not much of that has been created so far.

If such implementations are created, you can always decide if
string/ansistring interfaces should continue to exist somehow (maybe just
performing a conversion and calling the UnicodeString version where
possible), or whether they should become the only ones available.

Tomas