Greetings all! Michiel and I have been talking, weighing options of what course to take in dealing with moving forward-- with the goal of both offering both stability and the choice to have the latest functionality and bug fixes as well as give contributors the opportunity to be part of overall improvements to the driver.
What we are going to do is: Add to the connection the ability to turn on proper UTF handling with 'mysql_enable_proper_unicode'. This gives the user volition the option to knowingly toggle whether they want the new functionality and understand that data structures returned or accepted by the driver might be different than without this setting. The other options had their merits, but we think this will solve the issue while keeping the driver unified and prevent divergence. Thank you for your input over the last couple months-- we look forward to moving ahead! Patrick and Michiel
