Re: [boost] [filesystem] Major changes before standardization

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-11-14 17:25:25

At 03:11 PM 11/14/2004, Peter Dimov wrote:
 >Beman Dawes wrote:
 >>
 >> I've been assuming Microsoft's Layer for Unicode, and was assuming that 

 >> Peter meant there were serious problems even if it was enabled.
 >
 >No, MSLU works, as far as I know. But we can't assume its existence. A
 >library that doesn't support Win9x without MSLU will not be useful for
 >users
 >that need to write code that works on a wide variety of machines. Win9x's 

 >installed base, although declining, is still significant.

Is there a reason not to just point such users to
http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/psdkredist.htm? 
or provide the redestributables in an apps installer if it has one?

Even if we provided an alternate implementation that considered Win9X to 
have char based native path strings, we still have to do conversions 
between  strings and wstrings; filesystem::path traffics in either 
regardless of the native platform. Since the default conversion has to be 
the one provided by the operating system if any, we still can't get away 
from needing the Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Win9X.

The idea that the default conversion has to be the one provided by the 
operating system (if the O/S supports conversion between wide and narrow 
character paths) isn't something that I invented. It has been mentioned by 
a number of the developers with actual wide/narrow experience that I've 
asked for advise over the last couple of years.  I can think of two 
committee members (not from the same company, either) who were really 
adamant about it.

--Beman