[boost] Re: Boost Unicode support ideas

From: Miro Jurisic (macdev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-04-12 05:07:05

In article <8765c5yl77.fsf_at_[hidden]>, Jeremy Maitin-Shepard <jbms_at_[hidden]> 
wrote:

> The IBM International Components for Unicode (ICU) library
> (http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/) is an existing C++ library with what
> appears to be a Boost-compatible license, which provides all or most of
> the Unicode support that would be desired in Boost or the C++ standard
> library, in addition to Unicode-equivalents of libraries already either
> in the standard library or in Boost, including number/currency
> formatting, date formatting, message formatting, and a regular
> expression library.  Unfortunately, it does not use C++ exceptions to
> signal exceptional conditions (but rather it uses an error code return
> mechanism), it does not follow Boost naming conventions, and although
> there are some C++-specific facilities, most of the C++ API is the same
> as the C API, thus resulting in a less-than-optimal C++ interface.

I don't agree with the statement that ICU "provides all or most of the Unicode 
support that would be desired in Boost or the C++ standard library", based on 
the fact that ICU does not use exceptions and does not provide STL iterator 
access to Unicode strings (as far as I know). To me this means that a new 
library is needed (its implementation can be based on ICU, linked to ICU, etc) 
or a substantial change to ICU is needed. My preference lies with a boost 
library that leverages ICU as much as possible without compromising any of the  
features that I would consider critical for a boost Unicode library.

meeroh

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