Most existing Lazarus use Ansi encodings, because that´s the default for Gtk1 and win32 interfaces today. This will change in the future and all widgetsets will support UTF-8, so all applications that pass strings directly to the interface (be written on code or on the object inspector) will need to be converted to utf-8.
When people develop software for non-fully working widgetsets like Gtk 2, Qt, WinCE (and futurely Win32U), they use the IDE compiled for more stable widgetsets, like Gtk and win32. To avoid inconsistencies (like passing iso characters for a utf-8 widgetset), it´s necessary to use an IDE working on the same encoding as the target widgetset. This means that we will need stable UTF-8 IDE before completing the migration to Unicode.
Currently we have various groups of widgetsets, according to the encoding:
Interfaces that use ANSI encoding: win32 and gtk (1) interfaces.
Interfaces that use UTF-8 encoding: gtk (1), gtk2, qt, fpGUI, carbon
Interfaces that currently use ANSI encoding, but need migration to UTF-8: win32, wince
Notice that gtk 1 is on both ANSI and UTF-8 groups. That´s because the encoding is controlled by an environment variable on Gtk 1.
As Lazarus is today, existing software will work, if recompiled for win32, wince or gtk interfaces, but will face encoding issues compiling for other widgetset. And new software, using UTF-8 will work when recompiled for any of the widgetsets on the Unicode group.
One very important note is that you must use the IDE compiled for the same group you are targeting. This is because the IDE uses the encoding of the widgetset it was compiled to, and not the one of the target widgetset to write LFM and LRS files.
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