[Liblas-devel] UNICODE

[Howard Butler]

On Nov 17, 2008, at 12:57 PM, Mateusz Loskot wrote:

> Neil Woodhouse pisze:
>> Hello,
>> 	I wondered whether someone could make a comment on UNICODE
>> compliance for either the code base or the LAS format itself? I did  
>> not
>> find too much on the liblas WIKI site.
>
> Neil,
>
> AFAIU, the LAS specification does not discuss Unicode usage.
> The LAS specification clarifies that characters in string data are  
> of single-byte length, so ie. the file signature "LASF" is 4 bytes  
> long.
>
> This is all I know about it.

Additionally, the C API uses narrow strings everywhere, and no  
wstrings are used for file names -- ruling out unicode file name  
support.  libLAS could be updated to support unicode filenames, I  
think.  "Full unicode support", whatever that might mean, isn't going  
to be possible because the 1.X specifications of LAS say nothing about  
it and practically limit it in their description.

Howard