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

[John]

On 22/02/2011 5:11 PM, Jürgen Hestermann wrote:
> > I don't need Unicode support, and I DON'T want to have to worry 
> about its complexities. > Just leave a compiler mode or switch that 
> lets me keep "string"  as LongString and I will be
> > happy, whatever happens with unicode. And, as far as I understand, 
> you can still set
> > string = shortstring with a compiler switch, so leaving a compiler 
> switch for unicode strings
> > would be "just like it did from ShortString to LongString".
>
> 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.
Probably because that was the "normal" way of doing it, since ansi/long 
string was added to Dephi a *long* time ago.  Also simply less typing, 
more readable if I always know that a string is just a string.  Sure, if 
you are doing lots of stuff with multiple string types, it makes good 
sense to be specific.  I am not.  (If I am fussed about what sort of 
integer I have, I will work it out and declare it properly.  If I just 
want a counter, I will just use "integer").

I suppose if the ansistring type remains, I can do a global replace on 
ALL my code, or redeclare string as ansistring, or something, but I 
don't see why there should not be a compiler switch to do it, seeing 
that that was the way the last string divergence was handled.  What I 
was really afraid of was that Graeme had declared ansistring to be 
surplus to his needs, and that therefore there was no need for it to exist.

John Sunderland