Talk:Unicode Support in Lazarus

From Free Pascal wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search

I would propose to restructure this page as follows or to create a new page if necessary for beginners:

Here's the outline as I see it:

  1. Who is this page for? A brief description of who should be reading this and why.
  2. What is unicode and when to use it: a brief description of the purpose behind unicodes and links to external pages that delve into greater details for those who wish to know more. Mostly, a few guidelines on when to use Unicode and when not to use it.
  3. Prerequisites: which version of Lazarus-Ide one should be in to use Unicode.
  4. 'Hello World' in Unicode. A sample program showcasing how to use a command-line program in Unicode
  5. 'Hello GUI': a sample application with GUI to showcase how this is done.
  6. Unicode Standard API: a list of string routines that work out of the box with Unicode when LazUtils is included.
  7. Unicode Required calls: a list of ut8 routines that are required to be called with the Utf8 prefix.
  8. modeswitch Unicodestrings: a discussion on utf-16 versus utf-8. What are the pros and cons of each and when to use which.
  9. Where to go from here: a list of useful more in-depth links about unicode
  10. You have a question: some advice on how to leverage the forum for questions related to Unicode.

In my mind, this is a user-centric approach to documentation instead of an implementation-centric approach that is currently used by the page as it is now.