Re: [boost] [General] Treat narrow strings as UTF-8 (compilation flag)

Subject: Re: [boost] [General] Treat narrow strings as UTF-8 (compilation flag)
From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-07-22 11:56:56

On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 2:49 AM, Yakov Galka <ybungalobill_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Hello again,
>
> My previous mail was ignored by the community, and I would like to know why.
> If it wasn't clear, I want to hear your opinion on the topic.
>
> If there is a disagreement, I would like to know what is the reason for the
> disagreement. If there are problems in the proposal, perhaps we can fix them
> and come to a solution accepted by all.
>
> If you agree in principle but just don't have the resources for this work,
> I'm going to do this work (or part of it). I just don't want to waste my
> time on something that is certainly going to be rejected.

The default encoding for narrow and wide characters char and wchar_t
in Boost libraries mirrors the default encoding for these characters
in C++ and the standard library, which is in turn mirroring the
default encoding supplied by various operating systems. It is as
simple as that.

So if you want a change, convince these folks to change their default
encoding, and give users a chance to adjust to that change.

Until that happens, you might get a more positive response from the
maintainers of Boost libraries if you figured out a way for users to
globally change the assumed default narrow encoding from the system
encoding to encoding X, where X may well be UTF-8 but also might be
something else, such as some of the encodings widely used in Asia.

Just my personal opinion,

--Beman