[Lazarus] Unicode branch

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Michael Schnell schrieb:
> I just have been told that Embarcadero plans to do away with the stuff 
> fpc is just implementing in the "Unicode branch" and is on the verge to 
> change to a completely new String type that is
>  - UTF-16-only,
>  - Zero-Based, and
>  - immutable.
> And thus completely incompatible with any "String" Type ever known in 
> Pascal.

They also make TObject reference counted...


> So
>  - why do we discuss compatibility at all ?
>  - do we like this (rather complex and not at all "straight forward") 
> String type that much that it is viable to implement, debug and decently 
> document this library ?

UnicodeString has been introduced in D2009, i.e. we are a couple of 
years behind with compatibility.

Once this has been implemented, we can spend some more years with 
updating the RTL and LCL - or continue using UTF-8 instead of UTF-16.

When we can start implementing further changes, we should look whether 
Delphi exists at all, at that time. I wouldn't hold my breath ;-)

DoDi