UTF support sheduled to 2.0

[Robert Brenstein]

>>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.
>

The plans and new features of V2 sound really great (and I mean it) 
but I share concerns of others that such a major rewrite of kernel 
will have to be well proven and tested before major deployments. No 
imbedded testing system can catch all obscure bugs. Kernel rewrite 
truly paves the road into the future, but aside from speed 
improvements, the changes there will be largely invisible to us, at 
least in the short term, and despite Ruslan's optimistic time 
schedule, it will most likely take longer in reality and it will be 
yet another release before it will become truly ready. And then there 
is a question which of the features we continue to wait for will be 
implemented right away. I can be cool about the delay with unicode as 
it does not impact me at the moment, but it seems to me that Ruslan & 
Co need to do more careful planning for adding new features and what 
promises they make. There must be some clear roadmap to follow.

It is a fact that different groups of Valentina developers need 
different features which are ciritical for their projects and Ruslan 
seems to keep juggling what is the current priority and what gets 
implemented next (remember the parser vs server debate last year?). 
This can be frustrating for all sides. We are still, for example, 
waiting for proper handling of international texts (not just unicode 
-- this has been discussed over and over for past several years) or 
queries on existing cursors. These are supposedly coming with the new 
sql parser -- I for one won't bother to upgrade to 2.0 if these ain't 
there. But the bottom line is that the freeze on further development 
of 1.x may effectively mean a freeze on improvements for quite a 
while. How long it remains to be seen. So is this freeze with full 
focus on V2 really the best strategy or is having v2 somewhat later 
but having continued development of 1.x more beneficial? I can only 
hope that Ruslan's decision is right and he really manages to get V2 
stable and out with all the promised features (and that includes 
documentation and support improvements) in a short time. Short enough 
to keep competition at bay and Valentina developers happy.

Back to scheduled activities...

Robert