[Lazarus] String vs WideString

[Tony Whyman]

On 14/08/17 14:11, Marcos Douglas B. Santos via Lazarus wrote:
> FPC and Lazarus claim they are cross-platform — this is a fact — and
> because that, IMHO, both should be use in only one way in every
> system, don't you think?
>
> Best regards,
> Marcos Douglas
Precisely. But why this fixation on UTF-16/Unicode and not UTF8?

Lazarus is already a UTF8 environment.

Much of the LCL assumes UTF8.

UTF8 is arguably a much more efficient way to store and transfer data

UTF-16/Unicode can only store 65,536 characters while the Unicode 
standard (that covers UTF8 as well) defines 136,755 characters.

UTF-16/Unicode's main advantage seems to be for rapid indexing of large 
strings.

You made need UTF-16/Unicode support for accessing Microsoft APIs but 
apart from that, why is it being promoted as the universal standard?