Re: locales and encodings on Windows

> > > >>> [about PG not supporting Unicode on Windows]
> > > >>
> > > >> PostgreSQL uses the OS functinos to do locale
> handling. The other
> > > >> databases usually implement their own (or use a
> library that does
> > > >> it, but they do not rely on the OS)
> > >
> > > > Being a developer myself I can understand this reason,
> but in the
> > > > PG context I'm a User I not having Unicode support is my eyes a
> > > > very big deficiency which gives the whole Win32 a
> semi-professional "touch".
> > >
> > > > Unicode is something very important and I do hope this will be
> > > > solved in on of the next releases.
> > >
> > > [ shrug... ] It can't be too important to Windows users, since
> > > their platform doesn't support it.
> >
> > And what solution options do we have? Is bundling our own Unicode
> > library something we even want to consider? I would think not.
>
> If the Win32 Unicode implemetation is buggy, can we work
> around the bugs in our code?

The implementation is not buggy.
The implementation of strcoll() etc *does not exist* for UTF-8.
There is a perfectly working Unicode system on Windows - it has been
there since Windows NT 3.1. *Every* API in Windows is unicode
internally. With Unicode in this case, MS means UTF-16.
How do other programs do? They convert their strings to UTF-16 and use
the unicode functions in the OS. UTF8 support only exists in the two
functinos used to convert to/from UTF-16.

That's at least how I understand it. I'm not a locale/encoding expert
though, so I could be wrong :)

Perhaps an emulation layer could be written for port/win32. I can't
really say, because I don't know these things well enough (on any
platform).

//Magnus