Re: [php6] Unicode support, options?

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 6:54 AM, Pierre Joye <pierre.php@gmail.com> wrote: > * ICU: > U_CHARSET_IS_UTF8 allows to force ICU to use UTF-8 by default. It is a > ICU compile time setting.It is is not possible to set it at PHP > configure time. It means that users will have to create their own > build. Alternatively we can bundle ICU but this will be awkward, a > maintenance nightmare for both php and the distros. > > Alternatively UText can be used to create UTF-8 string. APIs accepting > UText allow almost everything we need. However the counterpart is that > a UTF-8 UText is readonly. Any operation altering its content will > require duplication, clones or conversions. That may kill all gains we > got from using UTF-8 only. > > The U_CHARSET_IS_UTF8 is very appealing but to bundle ICU is actually > show stopper. Asking users to custom build ICU is not an option > either. I do not know if the distros will be ready to provide two > different builds of ICU either, it may add a lot of issues with all > projects using ICU. Here is a 1st reply from ICU: http://sourceforge.net/p/icu/mailman/message/32031609/ It sounds like this flag could be a good option for PHP's Unicode support. Btw, I created a sub page for Unicode support: https://wiki.php.net/ideas/php6/unicode > Thoughts, comments or ideas? I found another C++ library to do the basic UTF-8 operations, easl: https://code.google.com/p/easl/ It could be a nice one to use in combination with ICU, small and fast (1st tests). Cheers, -- Pierre @pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org