what about dropping ascii builds?

win98, Py234, wxPy2528

Kevin Altis:

Just out of curiosity, what if there was no such thing as an ascii
build of wxPython 2.5.x and 2.6.x, at least not a supported binary
package? In other words, what are the downsides to moving to only
supporting Unicode? Is it doable on all platforms?

Robin Dunn gave the correct answer.
Beside this, I add the following remarks:

1) You will just lose the win98 users base. The problem is not the lost of
users, the problem is the lost of trust in wxPython.

2) wxPython (wxWidgets) has enough problems with chars handling. Maybe
it's time to make some brush up at the wxWidgets level.

3) After n years of Windows existence, it's also time for some developers
to understand the different chars encodings. 7-bits ASCII, 8-bits ASCII
and ANSI are three different encodings. From this, the point 2).
(For its various libs, MS is using either Unicode or ANSI, or DBCS)

4) Unicode. I skip. There are too many things to say about this.

5) Two versions for Windows, where it does make sense? No more stupid
than having packages for Debian, Red Hat, Fedora... and no package for,
let's say, Ubuntu.

6) OOo requires the Unicode extension on a win98 platform (unicow.dll)
and OOo is working smoothly. I wonder if it's no possible to "stress"
wxWidgets for a unicow compatibility?

Jean-Michel Fauth, Switzerland

Jean-Michel Fauth wrote:

6) OOo requires the Unicode extension on a win98 platform
(unicow.dll) and OOo is working smoothly. I wonder if it's no
possible to "stress" wxWidgets for a unicow compatibility?

wxWidgets is already capable of using unicows.dll, but as Robin wrote
in his reply, it's not very well done on Microsoft's side:

   Microsoft's MSLU library really isn't up to snuff for running
   arbitrary unicode apps on win98/Me. There are some messages that
   are not translated correctly, or are not sent at all, or etc.

Regards,
Vaclav

ยทยทยท

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Vaclav Slavik wrote:

Jean-Michel Fauth wrote:

6) OOo requires the Unicode extension on a win98 platform
(unicow.dll) and OOo is working smoothly. I wonder if it's no
possible to "stress" wxWidgets for a unicow compatibility?
   
wxWidgets is already capable of using unicows.dll, but as Robin wrote in his reply, it's not very well done on Microsoft's side:

  Microsoft's MSLU library really isn't up to snuff for running arbitrary unicode apps on win98/Me. There are some messages that
  are not translated correctly, or are not sent at all, or etc.

Vaclav, I was reading up on this and saw you've done libunicows to enable easier linking.
There's also talk there about Mozilla's MZLU. I wonder how long it would take to get that up to scratch enough to be able to use it on Win98 as a replacement for unicows.dll ...

David