Hi Andrew,
Welcome!
This is quite possibly the most comprehensive summary of a Boost discussion by a prospective GSoC student I've ever seen. Be sure to include this in your proposal as part of the background research (or a summary thereof).
Thanks for the praise! But I think you can probably take that back now as there are several other excellent proposals posted since GSoC's mentor organization list is announced. :)
I think that this project may end up being a minefield. Everybody has their favorite string characteristics and whatever you string you eventually implement, will eventually fail somebody's requirements :)
Yes indeed this can be quite a dangerous project. Hopefully it will be better with the new proposal that I've posted just now.
Was there any consensus on why std::string could or could not be parameterized with UTF-specific character traits? That seems, on the surface, like a possible solution. I was following the discussions but not as closely as others :)
I think the the problem is that character traits operates on code unit, but code unit != code point. Also because UTF-8 code point has variable length, it makes no sense to compare for equality between two code units. Character traits cannot also prevent invalid code point from getting into the string.
I think that one thing you should consider in your proposal is how you actually want to use your library. Consider trying to design your interface from a user perspective. I think that there is sometimes a tendency to focus on the technical aspects of a library, and It's easy to forget the end goal of writing a library: so somebody else can use it.
Thanks for pointing that out. Yes I will include different use cases and test cases in the project to make sure that the code can fulfill real world needs. I think that I might also fork some Boost projects and do some minor modification on their APIs to show the benefits of using my unicode_string_adapter over plain old std::string.
Please don't let a lack of communication dissuade you from submitting a proposal. This list can be high traffic and its easy to miss good posts.
Thanks for the tips. I think I'll try to make my posts shorter next time to allow more people to have time to read and reply to me. :)