Re: [boost] [general] What will string handling in C++ look like in the future [was Always treat ... ]

Subject: Re: [boost] [general] What will string handling in C++ look like in the future [was Always treat ... ]
From: Ian Emmons (iemmons_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-19 09:06:52

On Jan 19, 2011, at 7:16 AM, Alexander Lamaison wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:33:02 +0100, Matus Chochlik wrote:
>> The string-encoding-related discussion boils down
>> for me to the following: What fill the string handling
>> in C++ look like in the (maybe not immediate) future.
>> 
>> *Scenario A:*
>> 
> [..]
>> All the wstrings, wxString, Qstrings, utf8strings, etc. will
>> be abandoned. All the APIs using ANSI or UCS-2 will
>> be slowly phased out with the help of convenience
>> classes like ansi_str_t and ucs2_t that will be made
>> obsolete and finally dropped (after the transition).
> 
> This is simply not going to happen.  How could MS even go about doing this
> in Windows?  It would make very single piece of Windows software
> incompatible with the next version!

There is a straightforward way for Microsoft to migrate Windows to this future:  If they add UTF-8 support to their narrow character interface (I am avoiding calling it ANSI due to the negative connotations that has) and add narrow character APIs for all wide character APIs that lack a narrow counterpart, then I believe we could treat POSIX and Windows identically from an encoding point of view.  Then Microsoft would be free deprecate their wide character interface over an extended period of time, if they so chose.

Ian Emmons