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Why would brand new software NOT work with Unicode? / Challenges

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daddydave:
You are creating an application today. It will not be Unicode compliant. Why? For older programs, it may not be worth the rewrite effort, but if you are writing code from scratch, intended for a worldwide audience, this would seem to be automatic, and yet it doesn't seem to be. What are some of the challenges you face in creating software that leaves the ASCII character set of yesteryear behind (except for backward compatibility)? Be as technical as you want, don't worry about it being over my head. Maybe it will be, but I can still use it as a starting point for further research, and others will benefit.

On the other hand, be as non-technical as you want as well. I think I am seeing a trend of requesting Unicode support for various DonationCoder applications (maybe I am just noticing it more now that I am learning Devanagari script), so I think a lot of people want to know why this isn't easy!

vlastimil:
Just few random thoughts:
* Is unicode supported by default in the used development tool? If not, and someone may not bother with the switch.
* From what I have heard, Windows 98 is still relatively widespread in some countries and unicode support on W9x is problematic.
* There is UCS16, UTF8 and other flavors. Dealing with all of them may be fiddly.

f0dder:
It could be the programming environment you're working in that has very poor unicode support (Delphi, C++ Builder, various scripting languages).

Then there's unicode itself - it's more than just "characters are wider than one byte" - you have issues like LTR/RTL, combining points, and whatnot... stuff that I've blissfully chosen to ignore for my hobbyist stuff, and hope I won't have to deal with professionally. Non-english sucks, really.

There is UCS16, UTF8 and other flavors. Dealing with all of them may be fiddly.
-vlastimil (January 05, 2012, 09:24 AM)
--- End quote ---
UCS-2, you mean? :) (Windows used to be UCS-2 afaik, then switched to UTF-16).

Renegade:
Some languages do not include robust unicode support innately. Some require hacks or libraries or mind-numbingly stupid amounts of work to get unicode to work.

The newer, more modern languages all have unicode support innately, or have easily integrated unicode support.

So, for example, if you use an older version of Delphi, you're hosed. Update and you may need to rewrite things -- but ask a Delphi whiz about that for details.

To be honest, it's really a complete disaster. The root cause is that computing resources were very limited and expensive a long time ago, and we're still paying for that now.

mouser:
I have found unicode universally painful as hell to deal with -- even when working with languages that have good support for it (Python). 

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