[Lazarus] Making sources compatible with Delphi (but Lazarus is priority)

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 2017-05-04 21:53, Juha Manninen via Lazarus wrote:
> It is briefly explained here:

I haven't been following FPC 3.x development much because I think the Unicode changes are terribly confusing.

A case in point. Looking at the Wiki page you listed, I read the following:

"
Since FPC 3.0 you must add the flag -FcUTF8 or add {$codepage UTF8} at the beginning of the unit.

  * Note: This changes all string literals to UTF-16, increasing the size of the binary and slowing it down. That's why Lazarus does not add it by default.
"

That makes NO sense to me. My units are always saved as UTF-8 encoded text. By helping the compiler out by explicitly telling it my files are UTF-8 encoded using -FcUTF8 or adding {$codepage UTF8} or saving the unit with a BOM marker breaks writeln() output under Linux/FreeBSD. Who knows what else it breaks. Apparently the breakage is because of the "NOTE" quoted above. Why the hell does FPC consider string literals UTF-16 when I explicitly told it the whole unit is UTF-8 encoded? FPC is doing the opposite of what I told it!

I simply can't see myself moving past FPC 2.6.4 at this point. FPC 3.x just doesn't make any sense.

Regards,
  Graeme