[Lazarus] Lazarus (UTF8) and Windows: SysToUTF8, UTF8ToSys... Is there a better solution?

[Marco van de Voort]

On Tue, Dec 24, 2013 at 12:22:41PM -0200, Marcos Douglas wrote:
> > IMO the biggest group are old fashioned Delphi (D7) users, which want their
> > existing Ansi/VCL code base supported *without* complications and
> > incompatibilities introduced by the newer Delphi versions. The subject of
> > this thread clearly indicates that UTF-8 is *not* a solution for this group
> > of users.
> 
> I started this thread. My problem isn't to use UTF-8 on Windows... my
> problem is use different encodings on the same code, ie, RTL <> LCL.

Yes. But the selection of UTF8, and the legacy concerns with that are for
Lazarus, and lazarus alone.
 
> Use functions, always, to convert string between RTL and LCL and
> vice-versa IHMO is wrong because the final code is confusing. In a
> huge application you still need to think "here is UTF-8 or
> ANSI/UTF-16?"

There are many scenarios up in the sky, and nothing is 100% certain, but it
would at least be significantly better. It is already significantly better
in trunk.

The only problem on Windows is that you must only pass a string with a very
clear encoding to a RTL function.  

so 

 assignfile(f,s+s2+s3);  

is dangerous if they are not all the same encoding. If there is any
mismatch, it will be converted down to default encoding.

It is defined, but somewhat special.

> > That's my conclusion as well. But is that new audience worth to abandon the
> > entire existing Lazarus audience?
> 
> Of course nobody will abandon the entire existing Lazarus audience. If
> the RTL will be UTF-16, UTF-32, whatever the Lazarus will continues --
> I think -- working using UTF-8.

There is no utf8 on Windows. One can try to mess with the defaultcodepage,
but that will probably only force a different kind of problems.

On Windows there is only ansi or utf16, or keeping it manual.