Re: [AD] Proposal to kill non-UTF-8 support

[Laurence Withers <lwithers@xxxxxxxxxx>]

In reply to Peter Wang <tjaden@xxxxxxxxxx>:

[snip - use UTF-8 only]

>- Less code, less bugs, smaller API

I agree; we cannot hope to debug something hugely complicated, so the
smaller/simpler the component parts are, the more likely it will all
work.

>- No conversion to/from ASCII source, thus easier to get right.  This
>is more important for addons than Allegro itself.

This is extremely useful, especially when you start mixing OS calls and
Unicode; if we just assume all other strings are 7-bit ASCII, and have a
robust way of dealing with 8-bit ASCII (such as skipping the dodgy
character), this will make things so much simpler. Example: driver
description fields.

>- Unicode conversion routines are available in separate libraries, so
>they shouldn't be duplicated in Allegro.  And I don't think this is
>really Allegro's domain.
>  
>- Lots of work went into those routines *and* their proper usage in
>the library, we would be throwing that effort away

Addressing both of these points: move the current Unicode converters
into an add-on/module/whatever you want to call it. In the worst case
scenario, users would have to convert between, say, UTF-8 and Unicode
whenever they wanted Allegro/OS calls to communicate, but this is surely
better than the current messy situation?

>- People using native codepages would likely complain because one/two
>characters could explode to six characters. 

There are valid arguments both ways, as ever, but I also agree that this
probably won't be much of an issue.

Bye for now,
-- 
Laurence Withers, lwithers@xxxxxxxxxx
                http://www.lwithers.demon.co.uk/

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