[Lazarus] How to use strings properly with fixes_1_6 and FPC 3.0.0?

[Juha Manninen]

On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 4:12 AM, Martin Frb via Lazarus
<lazarus at lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:
> Which ones does it not support?
> When I added it to SynEdit it was complete. It had all the combinings that
> the utf8 standard had back then. (at least that I could find in the
> documentation)
>
> Of course if a new combining range is added, it will not contain it. If that
> is needed one needs an external (OS or otherwise) library, that can/will be
> updated on those occasions.
>
> Mind "combining codepoints" have nothing to do with how many codepoints will
> be represented by one glyph.

Ok, I was confusing the Unicode terms again.
I guess the biggest complexity is in glyphs and ligatures. I still
don't understand their details.
However for a program that must care about Unicode, like a text layout
app, the rules for combining codepoints and glyphs are equally
important. Codepoints for one glyph should never be split or copied
separately. Isn't it so?
SynEdit is a text layout app, too.
In that sense the function IsCombining is not enough for practical
purposes. A comprehensive library function should take care of glyphs
(+ other rules), too.

I looked at Bero's PUCU and the other links:
 http://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,33064.msg214342.html#msg214342
but it went over my head. I must study the issue more later.

* A reality check! *
Despite problems and incompleteness of our Unicode support, it is
actually better than most other solutions out there.
Ok, most programming tools support Unicode somehow but people use them wrong.
A good example is our forum SMF software. It deals with text layout
and definitely should handle Unicode but it does not.
Not even single Codepoints beyond BMP which should be the most easy
case! No combining rules needed or anything.
Try to add this text to a forum post:  (I hope the mail SW can deal with it...)
  "Have 🍷 for FPC 💓 Lazarus."

Now the fact is that code made with FPC / Lazarus using the LazUnicode
functions and enumerators supports Unicode already much better than
most code out there!

Juha