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I'm working on a english only C++ program for Windows where we were told "always use std::wstring", but it seems like nobody on the team really has much of an understanding beyond that.
I already read the question titled "std::wstring VS std::string. It was very helpful, but I still don't quite understand how to apply all of that information to my problem.
The program I'm working on displays data in a Windows GUI. That data is persisted as XML. We often transform that XML using XSLT into HTML or XSL:FO for reporting purposes.
My feeling based on what I have read is that the HTML should be encoded as UTF-8. I know very little about GUI development, but the little bit I have read indicates that the GUI stuff is all based on UTF-16 encoded strings.
I'm trying to understand where this leaves me. Say we decide that all of our persisted data should be UTF-8 encoded XML. Does this mean that in order to display persisted data in a UI component, I should really be performing some sort of explicit UTF-8 to UTF-16 transcoding process?
I suspect my explanation could use clarification, so I'll try to provide that if you have any questions.
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String overview std::string is used for standard ascii and utf-8 strings. std::wstring is used for wide-character/unicode (utf-16) strings. There is no built-in class for utf-32 strings (though you should be able to extend your own from basic_string if you need one).
UTF-8 actually works quite well in std::string . Most operations work out of the box because the UTF-8 encoding is self-synchronizing and backward compatible with ASCII.
std::string doesn't have the concept of encodings. It just stores whatever is passed to it. cout <<'è';
UTF-8 is an encoding system for Unicode. It can translate any Unicode character to a matching unique binary string, and can also translate the binary string back to a Unicode character. This is the meaning of “UTF”, or “Unicode Transformation Format.”
Windows from NT4 onwards is based on Unicode encoded strings, yes. Early versions were based on UCS-2, which is the predecessor of UTF-16, and thus does not support all of the characters that UTF-16 does. Later versions are based on UTF-16. Not all OSes are based on UTF-16/UCS-2, though. *nix systems, for instance, are based on UTF-8 instead.
UTF-8 is a very good choice for storing data persistently. It is a universally supported encoding in all Unicode environments, and it is a good balance between data size and loss-less data compatibility.
Yes, you would have to parse the XML, extract the necessary information from it, and decode and transform it into something the UI can use.
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