As I have now been more carefully studying the section on Unicode in
Bob Swart's Intro to D2009, which I had only given a perusal before, I'm
coming to realize that there may even be conditions subject to this
particular area that must be better understood and handled even in the
writing of new applications, where as I had first thought only apps I might
recompile from an earlier version would require attention.
One example is in fixing the nodes of Delphi's TreeView which still
only take ansicode strings. Bob has suggested a number of fixes which are
also found on QualityCentral. Until such time as Codegear decides to
implement these in a fix, ( unless they already have done so and I haven't
heard about it ), he suggests copying the offending pas file to the project
directory and making the changes there...which I imagine is to protect the
original source and keep backward compatibility. Since I needn't worry
about that myself, but still don't like altering the source either, can I
place the unit with the changes I've made in my lib path and have it take
precedence over the original for all projects without having to actually
include it with my project files? Is there some other path that I can use
to allow this?
Another one regards the Uppercase function which appears in two
units, AnsiStrings and SysUtils. And only the latter of these works on
Strings which default to Unicode Strings. So now I have to remember to
qualify with the unit name when using this function or will the compiler
know which one to use automatically based on the type of string being passed
to it? I would think it would since SysUtils is always listed in my
interface section, but I like to know for sure!
And what about Windows API functions where as Microsoft has seen fit
to provide both Ansi and Wide String versions. Must I use actual
WideStrings, cast Unicode to Wide, or will they work correctly with Unicode
right out of the box? Bob did write a section on this but the answer to
this question didn't register with me so I plan on re-reading this stuff a
number of times anyway just to be sure I've got it all down right.
In any event, I just want to thank Bob for making a very readable
text. I must admit that with all the many things I've read about the
differences between UTF8, UTF16, and UTF32 over the years, his is the first
that gave me a practical sense of their relationship. But of course the
most interesting line in the whole file comes in the next chapter where he
says, "In this section I'll globally cover Globalization...! I couldn't
help myself and just had to throw that one out there! <bg>
from "Robert Meek" dba "Tangentals Design"
Creative Concepts Programming for Windows Vista
E-mail: ffo...@comcast.net
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so!"
[Bertrand Russell 1872-1970]
_______________________________________________
Delphi mailing list -> Delphi@elists.org
http://lists.elists.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/delphi
