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copied!<p>Delphi versions prior to Delphi 2009 <em>do</em> have Unicode support built in. The <strong><code>WideString</code></strong> type has been available since Delphi 4, I think, maybe earlier. <code>WideString</code> isn't as nice as the new <code>UnicodeString</code> type, but it still holds 16-bit Unicode characters, and you can type-cast it to <strong><code>PWideChar</code></strong> to send strings to Unicode API functions. The <code>Windows</code> unit declares most of the "wide" versions of the API functions, and there's nothing to stop you from declaring other functions yourself if you find some missing.</p> <p>What prior versions don't have is Unicode support in the VCL. For that, you can use the <strong>Tnt Unicode controls</strong>. They used to be free. Looks like there are a few places where the latest free version is still available: <a href="http://mh-nexus.de/en/tntunicodecontrols.php" rel="noreferrer">(1)</a>, <a href="http://www.yunqa.de/delphi/doku.php/products/tntunicodecontrols/index" rel="noreferrer">(2)</a>.</p> <p>The <a href="http://homepages.codegear.com/jedi/jcl/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>JCL</strong></a> has a couple of units for working with Unicode. The <strong><code>JclWideStrings</code></strong> unit has mostly light-weight utility functions. The <strong><code>JclUnicode</code></strong> unit is more complete, but it also includes a sizable resource for determining character properties of all Unicode characters.</p> <p>With the JCL you have a few choices for classes to hold lists of <code>WideString</code> values. I think Delphi 7 even comes with a class for that.</p> <p>Don't think that just because you don't have Delphi 2009 you can't write a Unicode program.</p> <p>If you have a <code>WideString</code> value, and you want to encode it as UTF-8, then call the <strong><code>Utf8Encode</code></strong> function. It will return an <code>AnsiString</code> value, or possibly <code>Utf8String</code>, if your Delphi version declares that type. It's not the same as Delphi 2009's <code>Utf8String</code> type, though. Delphi 2009's will <em>automatically</em> convert to <code>UnicodeString</code> or <code>AnsiString(x)</code> and vice versa in assignment statements. Prior versions just have a single <code>AnsiString</code> type, so you need to keep track for yourself which variables hold UTF-8 data and which hold Ansi data. (Hungarian notation on your variable and parameter names can help you keep track.) And of course, there's also a <strong><code>Utf8Decode</code></strong> function for converting UTF-8 data back to <code>WideString</code>.</p> <p>For handling other character encodings, you want to check out <a href="http://www.philo.de/xml/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Open XML</strong></a>, a free XML library for Delphi. As part of its XML handling, it has support for converting between 70 different encodings.</p>

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