Re: Unicode in Delphi/VCL (yet again)

Paras Kafley wrote:

> Does anyone know if Borland if ever plans to add Unicode support in
> VCL. Yes i know it is a major undertaking and everything that goes
> with it, but not having unicode support in Delphi IMHO is fairly big
> drawback. I know that there are good and free Unicode controls for
> Delphi, but it sure would be nice to have unicode support in the core
> product.
> To me to be prefectly honest support for Unicode is far more important
> than support for 64 bit native compiler and to hazard a guess I am not
> the only one.
>
> ~Paras

Paras,

The main question is: How much compatibility are you willing to
sacrifice to get a Unicode VCL? Unicode VCL for Win32 will not be
fully compatible with many third party components out there. Unicode
VCL for Win32 will require new component designers in the IDE that will
not be compatible with Ansi VCL. Unicode VCL for Win32 will require
new design interfaces in the IDE which will not be compatible with the
existing design-time interfaces.

If we had the luxury of throwing a giant switch and making all strings
everywhere in VCL and the IDE Unicode, then these compatibility issues
might not be as severe (but there would still be breakages), but in
reality it will be necessary to keep the Ansi VCL going in parallel
with a new Unicode VCL. Unicode VCL and today's Ansi VCL controls are
very unlikely to be mixable in the same application (because one of
them would have to be the dominant model, and the other would be
penalized with string conversion performance bottlenecks and potential
data loss). Ansi and Unicode VCLs must coexist in the same IDE. That
means double the effort in the IDE, designers, components, data
support, and compiler, and double the effort for third party component
developers.

Yes, we intend to produce a Unicode VCL. We already have in VCL.NET,
and the only sane choice for 64 bit VCL is all-Unicode. The cost of
adding Unicode support is less when you are starting with a new
platform base which already has a compatibility barrier.

-Danny

--
Delphi Compiler Core: http://blogs.borland.com/dcc
.

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