A Case Study on Unicode Integration: Microsoft Visual Basic, version 3.0 to version 7.0
Intended Audience: |
Manager, Software Engineer, Systems Analyst, Marketer |
Session Level: |
Intermediate |
Visual Basic is Microsoft's most popular development platform, and they
currently claim 3 million developers are using it. Since version 4.0, it has
integrated Unicode, but there have always been issues with what they
implemented for developers. It actually makes VB a perfect case study for
what happens when you do not consider all of the issues that are important
when adding Unicode support to a software product.
Specific issues with how Unicode is used (and not used) in VB are
highlighted, for all versions 4.0 through the new VB.NET, which finally
solves many (but not all!) of the issues. In the end, you will understand a
great deal about both the right and the wrong choices they made, and how to
avoid the same issues in your own Unicode integrations.
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