[boost] [gsoc] unicode tools and an unicode string type

Subject: [boost] [gsoc] unicode tools and an unicode string type
From: Mathias Gaunard (mathias.gaunard_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-03-29 21:40:36

I plan to submit during the week my proposal for the Summer of Code 
about Unicode.

I plan to provide:
- iterator adaptors to iterate sequences of code units, code points and 
graphemes, and eventually more, from a sequence in UTF-8, UTF-16, UCS-2 
or UTF-32/UCS-4.
- miscellaneous utilities, such as categorization of code points
- normalization functions
- comparisons but not collations
- substring search algorithms
- and finally, an unicode string type

I am well aware defining yet another new string type is quite 
controversial, but I believe this is quite useful. A dedicated type 
would be able to maintain certain invariants, such as maintaining a 
special normalization form.
Also, I believe it can be possible to come up with a string design that 
allows easy integration with any other existing string type, such as the 
ones from the standard or Qt.