It seems the answer I submitted earlier did not make to the list. I appolgize if this creates a second message on the same topic.
I suppose version 2 is the one you'd like to become part of Boost, then? I agree that the free functions are a good stepping stone for implementing iterators.
I would prefer to start with version 1, and add iterator adapters only after they are properly designed.
2) IO - currently it is out of the scope of this library.
Why? You can do nice things such as automatically setting the right codecvt based on the byte order mark. Works like a bliss. Again, I do have some code lying around for this. codecvt facets also provide more opportunity for optimisation.
Is your code publicly available? Maybe we can join forces and submit the library together.
4) A string type. There are way too many C++ string types out there
already, and I wanted to provide a tool for
making them work with UTF-8 encoding, rather than introducing yet another string class. Probably the same philosophy as Boost String Algorithms http://www.boost.org/doc/html/string_algo.html
I'm sorry, I fail to see how that argument works exactly. Can you elaborate? Algorithms that work on different kinds of containers: use free functions. I follow that. The alternative is to implement them as methods of a string class. Is that the alternative you have in mind? That was not what I meant. A UTF-encoded string is a container with codepoints (21-bit numbers) in an encoded form. The encoding puts some well-formedness constraints on the underlying bitstring. This is not unlike std::stack. Why not put the constraints in the type?
I indeed thought you meant another std::string like class. Could you give an example how would it look like from a user's perspective? Thanks. Nemanja Trifunovic