[boost] Any interest in adding unicode support to boost?

From: Erik Wien (wien_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-10-18 21:22:55

Hi. I am in the process of planning a library for handling unicode strings 
in C++, and would like to probe the interest in the boost community for 
something like that. I read through the unicode dicussion that was up back 
in april, and from what I could gather there was some amount of interest, 
but no one felt comfortable taking on the task as of yet.

I am hoping to be able to run this project as my Bachelor's Thesis in 
Computer Engineering (Not sure if that is the correct translation from 
Norwegian.) and if it gets approved by my college, myself and two other 
programmers will spend one semester working exclusively on this. (of course 
in collaboration with the boost community) At the end of that semester I 
hope the library (Or at least parts of it) will be in such a state it can 
submitted for review by boost.

The library should ultimately have suppport for at least basic handling of 
unicode strings (in all encodings), collation of strings and other locale 
specific operations. The library should also be (to the extent that is 
possible) integrated with the standard C++ library (and boost) to get as 
much functionality as possible "for free". I'm here thinking of, among other 
things, the std::locale class and compabillity with iostreams. How these 
requirements are fulfilled will be determined as the project (hopefully) 
moves forward.

I really feel the C++ language needs some form of standardized unicode 
support, and developing such a library within the boost community would be a 
very good way to ensure it fits everybody's needs the best possible way.

If you have any, and I do mean ANY, thoughts on this, please do not hesitate 
to reply to this mail and let me know. I'm looking forward to your 
responses.

Best regards
Erik Wien - Gjøvik College (Høyskolen i Gjøvik), Norway.