At Wed, 19 Jan 2011 12:50:17 -0800 (PST), Artyom wrote:
Most of existing projects and frameworks had decided about 1 single and useful encoding:
- C++:
+ Qt UTF-16 using QString + GtkMM UTF-8 using ustring + MFC UTF-16 using CString /when compiled in "Unicode mode" + ICU UTF-16 using UnicodeString
- C: + Gtk UTF-8 string
- Java: UTF-16 String - C#: UTF-16 string - Vala: UTF-8 String/using "char *"
And so on...
If you take a look on All C++ frameworks they all have a way to convert their string to std::string and backwards.
C++ hadn't picked yet, but C++ has string and very good one.
I guess whether std::string is a good design could be considered a matter of opinion.
And every existing project has an interface to it.
The problem we hadn't decided about its encoding.
Yes, we can't say to standard std::string is UTF-8 but we can say other things.
Like what?
As standard deprecated auto_ptr (which I think is crime but this is other story) it should deprecate all non-unicode aware uses of std::string and say default is UTF-8.
The standard can't deprecate usage patterns, just language (which includes the standard library) features.
Boost can and **should** decide - we use Unicode - and we use UTF-8 as all frameworks did.
Except for all the UTF-16 frameworks you cited above?
Decide and cut it.
Cut what?
As Boost had decided not to use tabs in source code or use BSL for all its code base.
Those were easy to do without breaking code.
This would do only good.
Sometimes it is bad to support every bad decision that was made.
No argument there.
As many Boost Developers and Users enjoy the fact that Boost is in constant evolution so we can evolve and decide:
On windows char */std::string etc is UTF-8 if you don't agree, don't use Boost.
Yes we can. It would break code, I'm pretty sure. I am not opposed to breaking code when the benefits are worth it, but in this case I am not yet convinced that there isn't an equally-good alternative that doesn't break code. We're still exploring those alternatives. -- Dave Abrahams BoostPro Computing http://www.boostpro.com