PureBasic 5.50 final is out !

[Tenaja]

I don't get what the big complaint is. I suckled at the teat of ascii, myself, and recall a few times when I was really annoyed at some stupid MS o/s calls that required two bytes per character, dumfounded at why they would be so inefficient.

Several 10's of thousands of lines of TEXT MANIPULATION code later (every procedure has numerous strings--and was the primary reason I chose PB over C), Fred announced the future of PB's ASCII. Sure, it was a nuisance to consider. But by then I realized the whole world doesn't use a 26-character alphabet, and I sucked it up and converted my project. It only took a few hours, and it was a lot less work than I thought it would be.

A few years later, I'm glad I got away from ascii. It's like a splinter that us old folks have grown to love out of ignorance, but we shouldn't have, if only our pitifully narrow horizons could be expanded beyond our mailbox.

[Fred]

Don't get it wrong, it's not for easy maintance. String functions are already written and adding one is rare enough so we could write an ASCII one. The maintenace stuff is the ice on the cake, but the main point is to have unicode ready apps for everyone. No modern language has such limitation as PureBasic in ascii mode: all strings ops are crippled and limited. It's the result of an old design back from the 2000's when we created PureBasic. Unicode was added later. Nobody would write a new langage with ascii only support, and PureBasic needs to evolve if it doesn't want to get stuck with design choices mades 15 years ago. It's only internal representation, except rare cases, converting an app (if not already in unicode which should be the case) should be quick and you will be ready for the future (which is nowaday, ascii is dead ). It doesn't change anything to PureBasic, so keep cool and relax.

[Keya]

we wouldn't ask for so much if we didn't love Purebasic so much Fred I can't even begin to imagine how frustrating we must make things for you lol

[Dude]

A lot of customers need to know that your apps support Unicode. If you can't put that in your app specs, you will lose sales. Something to consider. It's best to be able to advertise your apps as Unicode-compatible; trust me!

[tj1010]

The unicode move is nice. I was hoping to see the HTTP functions get some attributes. More people use PB for utility-automation than game-dev and they usually scrape data or interact with cheap web hosts for that. That usually needs custom headers and POST.

Not sure why there is any debate at all around keeping PB binaries in ASCII especially from people who put stuff out on any type of software market or for public distribution.. Non-English language support isn't that scary.. If unexpected character handling is a problem in your program then unicode is probably the least of your problems..

[Lord]

The unicode move is nice.
...

I don't think so.
Fred will loose a lot of beginners who don't want or need Unicode.
He will loose more pontential customers than the gains with his
unicode-only "BASIC"-language.
I think, he has more hobby-programmers than professional coder.
But the "profs" make a lot more noise.

[Roger Hågensen]

The unicode move is nice.
...

I think, he has more hobby-programmers than professional coder.
But the "profs" make a lot more noise.

Are you a "profs" ? (I assume you mean "pros" short for professionals).

Most pros code Unicode. Remember that Linux and OSX are both Unicode (UTF8 actually). And Windows has been Unicode (UTF16) actually since Windows 2000, that is almost 16 years ago. Windows have been natively Unicode for over one and half decade. Each time a non-Unicode app calls non-Unicode functions in the OS then Windows has to convert to/from Unicode. That being said, the overhead is minimal ans may not be noticed usually.

Also remember that PureBasic still supports Ascii, and even adds two new functions to help with creating/converting from and to Ascii.
I often have to deal with Ascii strings (either from files or from DLLs or passed some other way from other code that I did not make), and I used to need to roll my own code to convert to and from Ascii. Now that is a native PB function which should improve performance in my code.

The only Windows OS releases that are not native Unicode are Windows 98 and 9% and older. And MicroSoft ended corporate support for those ages ago. The few pros that write software for Legacy OSes can either use a older PB (that actually works on Win 9x) or some other language (like C).
If supporting legacy OS installations are so critical to you then maybe ask nicely and maybe Fred could put up a "No Support" release of the last PB that worked with Win9x, a sort of legacy download.

[Fred]

The unicode move is nice.
...

I don't think so.
Fred will loose a lot of beginners who don't want or need Unicode.
He will loose more pontential customers than the gains with his
unicode-only "BASIC"-language.
I think, he has more hobby-programmers than professional coder.
But the "profs" make a lot more noise.

Could you please explain why unicode will hurt beginners ? I can't follow you here. When someone download PureBasic, he automatically develops in unicode mode since almost 5 years. I didn't get any complains about it.

[X0r]

The only problem beginners will have to face is the fact that many user libraries as well as snippets in the forums do not work with Unicode.

[Marc56us]

Fred will loose a lot of beginners who don't want or need Unicode.
He will loose more pontential customers than the gains with his
unicode-only "BASIC"-language.

Beginners do not know the difference between ASCII and Unicode. They use the functions of String library without worrying about how it work internally.
Many programmers don't even care to know about on how a variable is encoded (2 bits 4 ? whatever) Neebies does not make big programs.
Instead they will be happy to code with a modern language without worrying about differences in the management of character strings for each country.
The only ones who can be bothered are people who use old external libraries or Win 9x.

[User_Russian]

I didn't get any complains about it.

In PB is very slow work with strings. I wrote about it. http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... ast+String
Unicode strings slowly than ASCII.

Also support for Unicode only complicate the code, if need to work with ASCII strings. I wrote about it. http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... 73#p489173

[Little John]

Beginners do not know the difference between ASCII and Unicode. They use the functions of String library without worrying about how it work internally.
Many programmers don't even care to know about on how a variable is encoded (2 bits 4 ? whatever) Neebies does not make big programs.
Instead they will be happy to code with a modern language without worrying about differences in the management of character strings for each country.
The only ones who can be bothered are people who use old external libraries or Win 9x.

My thoughts exactly!

[nco2k]

thanks team for the update.

the last time i compiled an ascii exe was 10 years ago. i dont understand what the fuss is all about.

c ya,
nco2k

[Little John]

i dont understand what the fuss is all about.

Once again, the fuss comes from people who look backward instead of forward.

[mhs]

Fred will loose a lot of beginners who don't want or need Unicode.
He will loose more pontential customers than the gains with his
unicode-only "BASIC"-language.

Beginners do not know the difference between ASCII and Unicode. They use the functions of String library without worrying about how it work internally.
Many programmers don't even care to know about on how a variable is encoded (2 bits 4 ? whatever) Neebies does not make big programs.
Instead they will be happy to code with a modern language without worrying about differences in the management of character strings for each country.
The only ones who can be bothered are people who use old external libraries or Win 9x.

I agree with that, a beginner does not really care about ascii or unicode. He just starts programming...