Re: [libxml++] UTF8 support

[Ole Laursen <olau hardworking dk>]

Stefan Seefeld <seefeld sympatico ca> writes:

> Ole Laursen wrote:
> 
> > But I really don't see the big problem here. std::string is really
> > just a fancy way of saying 'char *', right?
> 
> No.
>
> > And any decent
> > Unicode-aware string library will have a convenient conversion from
> > std::string, right?
> 
> No.

Then they are utterly broken IMNSHO. :-)

At least you should be able to do from_raw(my_string.data(),
my_string.size()).

[...]

> While it may be true that you can (technically) use std::string to
> contain utf8 data, the std::string *interface* would be completely
> inappropriate (beside the 'data()' and 'length()' methods :-)
> 
> Please don't abuse std::string in such a horrible way.

You are exaggerating, really.

Remember that many string algorithms can be used without any trouble
if the std::string contains UTF-8. Copying, concatenation and even
replacement (of ASCII characters) all work. That covers 95%-100% of
the cases for typical GUI usage, I think. I do have first hand
experience with this, combining Glib::ustring with legacy
std::strings.

Yes, it will be unsafe if you try to access certain parts of the
interface. But even it is crippled std::string, it is still much more
convenient than a 'char *'.

> But to go along the line you seem to suggest: libxml++ may use a
> 'data container' that is agnostic of the encoding or any related
> interpretation of the content. That may actually not even be such
> a bad idea, since it could just be a smart pointer taking over
> the memory from libxml2, freeing the data in its destructor using
> xmlFree().

Perhaps this idea is better. If there is an implicit
conversion to char*, it will interface nicely with both std::string
and Glib::ustring.

-- 
Ole Laursen
http://www.cs.auc.dk/~olau/