[Lazarus] Can anyone else read the attached bitmap using TImage?

[Dominique Louis]

You can convert from UTF-8 to Current locale and the opposite direct
using AnsiToUTF8 and UTF8ToAnsi located LCLIntf. This doesn't allow an
arbitrary locale, but only the current one.

About GUI strings, be aware that Lazarus is migrating to be a fully
Unicode (UTF-8):

http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/LCL_Unicode_Support

http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Roadmap#Status_of_features_on_each_widgetset

(look at the Unicode field)

So no conversion will be needed in the application and you should only
pass utf-8 strings to the LCL.

-- 
Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho