win32 Unicode support

I have been looking into bug 1314, and we really need to start behaving
as a Unicode application. We either need to start requiring the
unicows.dll on Win9x platforms or start distributing two executable
versions. One way or another the current situation, in which we limit
ourselves to ANSI capabilites for the sake of win9x users cannot
continue; bug 1314 should be fixed no later than the 2.4 release.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both options. Unicows allows
us to behave as a Unicode application all the time, but I recall that
enabling unicows with AW was not that straight forward; it was Daniel
who put lot of work into it, but there were problems with it, so that it
is currently disabled. It has been a while back, and I am not sure what
it would take to get it back on line.

Having two executables, on the other hand, complicates the build process
and bug fixing, but it also means uniform code internally (no runtime
tests for what platform are we on and having different excution paths
for different versions of the OS). At the same time, we will have to
decide to discontinue support for the win9x at some point, and the work
needed to get unicows working might be better utilised for other things.

I am leaning slightly in the direction of two builds, but I would like
to hear in particular from those who package AW what they think of it.

Tomas
Received on Tue Jan 18 09:50:19 2005