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

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-10-25 11:51:36

At 08:45 AM 10/25/2004, Peter Dimov wrote:
 >Beman Dawes wrote:
 >> At 01:10 PM 10/22/2004, Miro Jurisic wrote:
 >>
 >>> boost::fs, as far as I understand it, ran into the problem that it
 >>> was impossible to sidestep the invariant.
 >>
 >> No, rather than the error check was on by default. Some people want
 >> it off as the default.
 >
 >I interpret it a little differently: the "error" check provided no value 
to
 >users;

That's true for some users, but not all users.

 > in fact, it "provided" a negative value, which is why most prefer
 >"off by default".

Only for the users who don't want to perform the check. For those that do 
want the check, it has a positive value.

This in itself does not prove that all possible portability checks do not
 >provide value to users, just that this particular check is a net loss.
 >
 >By saying that "some people want it off as default" you are discounting 
the
 >results of the experiment, attributing them to personal preference. ;-)

You could attribute the preference to the degree of portability required by 
the user's application's but I think it is more than that. Some people 
would rather be safe by default, while others would rather error checks 
only be applied if explicitly invoked. That seems like a personal 
preference to me.

For Unicode strings, it is possible to provide an const_iterator interface 
which both guarantees the "valid Unicode" invariant and allows construction 
from character streams. That's the important point, if I understand your 
postings correctly. And maintenance of the invariant seems more than just a 
personal preference; it is a stronger design. So it is a stronger argument 
than the filesystem case.

--Beman