You should get a copy of Marco Cantu's Delphi 2009 Handbook - it has about 90 pages on Unicode in Delphi. I think Bob Swart has a similar (less detailed) book. There is also some videos from one of the CodeRage events (probably CodeRage 3 or 4).
Alister Christie Computers for People Ph: 04 471 1849 Fax: 04 471 1266 http://www.salespartner.co.nz PO Box 13085 Johnsonville Wellington On 18/11/2010 5:48 p.m., John Bird wrote: > Planning upgrading from D2007 to XE, but want to read up on issues I will > need to consider first to do with strings becoming Unicode by default. I > recall the release of D2009 came with good white papers explaining > ramifications, however I haven’t seen these as I haven’t upgraded. Asked > for such also at the XE event but have not been sent anything yet. > > I have a lot of code which I want to plan to be able to recompile easily, > and would like to plan this migration. I would prefer to put anything > contentious or varying into a library unit, a ‘wrapper’ so that I don’t have > to deal with these version differences in the main code... > > Anyone can answer any of these quick questions please post here or email > me – thanks! > > Q1 - Anyone got some good references to read up on ansistring to unicode > issues ? Comprehensive please! > > Q2 – With XE do the .pas and .dfm files become unicode text and hence cannot > be read by earlier Delphi, eg D2007 any more? > > Q3 – I do a lot of reading ascii data files, and writing back. Using > mainly TFilestream and stringlists. Does this in general mean I will need > to use file variables declared as Ansichar and AnsiString instead of Char > and String? > (I would prefer to use the standard VCL where possible) > > If I have variables > as1:Ansistring; > s2:string; > > Q4 – if I do s2:=as1 does this convert ansistrings to unicode? > > Q5 – if I do as1:=s2 does this convert a unicode string to ansstring? > > (otherwise how do I do this?) > > Q6 – I understand any code like > > char1:=string1[i]; > if char1 in [‘a’..’z’] then > begin > message:=string[i]+’ - character is lowercase’; > end > > will break, as ansi characters are ordinal (less than 256 or 512) > and set comparisons ['a'..'z'] or ['a','b','c'] can be used, this set > code cannot be used for unicode characters. What is the replacement? > > > Q7 – do literals like #13#10 still mean carriage return and linefeed? #9 > means tab? > if I have code like (logline string1 string2 are string) > > logline:=FormatDateTime(‘dd-mmm-yyyy hh:nn:ss’,now) + string1 + > #13#10+#9 + string2; > ShowMessage(logline); > Button1.hint:=logline; > writeln(f,logline); > > these work D5-D2007 - ie a 2 line messagebox text, 2 line hint, > and 2 lines written to a log file. > is this still going to work? > > do carriage returns/tabs/other control characters have to be defined > differently, eg as constants? > > Q8 – stringlist1.loadfromfile(‘Test1.txt’); > what happens if this file is ascii text being read into a stringlist > which is unicode strings. > > Q9 - stringlist1.savetofile(‘Test1.txt’) > presumably this is no longer ascii text. How do I save and read a > stringlist to/from a file if it is to be Ansi text? > > Q10 – If there are complexities in Q8 and Q9 is there a TAnsiStringlist > type (for ansistrings) as well as a unicode TStringlist type? > (I use stringlists a lot) > > Q11 – do inifiles become unicode too? > > Q12 – does Windows Notepad open unicode text files correctly? or can it > only be used on Ansi text files? > > Q13 - It looks like most programmers editors read and write ascii and > unicode encoding.....the one I use seems to distinguish between UTF-8 and > unicode as well – what is the difference? > > John > > _______________________________________________ > NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list > Post: delphi@delphi.org.nz > Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi > Unsubscribe: send an email to delphi-requ...@delphi.org.nz with Subject: > unsubscribe _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: delphi@delphi.org.nz Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to delphi-requ...@delphi.org.nz with Subject: unsubscribe
