[Lazarus] Does Lazarus support a complete Unicode Component Library?

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Jürgen Hestermann schrieb:

> But why are you using the generic "string" type at all? If you want to 
> make sure that you use AnsiString or ShortString or whatever then use it 
> directly. That way you have full control about the string type used.

The compiler should support string types as *really* different types, 
and should not try to convert (certain) string types automatically, or 
to reinterpret Ansi as UTF-8 or the like. Then there exist no problems 
with character codes, that do not exist in the codepage choosen by the 
developer.

I wouldn't care when a very new type, e.g. "text" or "Unicode", would be 
introduced for Unicode encodings, with slightly different rules 
(low-level support removed). This would allow to use strings *as* and 
*for what* these types have been introduced, strictly separated from 
other textual content and types.

I also wouldn't care when e.g. filenames would become a type of their 
own, with all *required* support for the various file systems and their 
conventions - because this is the *only* place where Unicode can not be 
ignored, in no application. This type could become a true class type, 
with polymorphic implementation of the target platform, networking and 
web conventions - e.g. tURL.

DoDi