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

Subject: Re: [boost] [general] What will string handling in C++ look like inthe future [was Always treat ... ]
From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-19 11:30:43

Alexander Lamaison wrote:
> > 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.
>
> It would break any programs using the narrow API currently that use any
> 'exotic' codepage (i.e. pretty much anything except 7-bit ascii).

It will only break programs that depend on a specific code page. Programs 
that use the narrow API but do not require a specific code page (or a single 
byte code page - the exact opposite of exotic) will work fine - they'll 
simply see an ANSI code page of 65001. It will still cause a fair amount of 
breakage, of course, but in principle, the transition path is obvious and 
straightforward.