UTF support sheduled to 2.0

[jda]

>
>UTF8 support is a must, and in fact, UTF16 support is going to come as
>well, because it brings with it significant benefits for creating
>database solutions in Japan and other 2-byte markets. Japan is, bar
>none, the second largest language market for REALbasic as well.
>
>Adding new features to both 1.x and 2.x products is significantly
>slowing down development for 2.x, and 2.x is the future of Valentina.
>
>Too many companies try to do too much at once, then find themselves in a
>financial crisis and ship half-finished, bug ridden products. We don't
>want that to happen, so this is one strategic measure.
>

It's hard to know even what to say to this. First, any work done with 
Unicode in 1.x is likely be transferrable to 2.0, probably with 
little extra effort (correct me if I'm wrong, Ruslan). Second, we've 
been told (for *well* over a year) that Unicode was coming, and 
specifically that it was coming in 1.9.9. Now out of the blue we're 
told it's not. Besides the obvious delay, there is another problem. 
Valentina 2 beta is to be released in September. It may or may not be 
unicode-savvy at that time (my bet is it won't be). And it will be as 
buggy as hell. It will certainly take months to move through testing, 
and when released more bugs will be found (it took about a year from 
the time I released my Valentina-based app before Ruslan made the bug 
fixes that made it  stable, and even now, although much improved, 
instablility in Valentina is the #1 things my users complain about). 
It could easily be 6 months (or more) before 2.0 is ready to deploy.

RS's database sucks. But it is being redone for 5.5. And Joe has 
intimated (not promised) that it will be unicode-savvy, which makes a 
great deal of sense now that RB uses UTF-8 everywhere. That alone 
will be cause to give it a good look. I love Valentina, and I love 
Ruslan's attitude and work ethic (easily the best developer I've 
worked with), but inability to deal with Unicode is a killer for me. 
I hope I'm wrong, but...

Jon