<div dir="ltr">Thanks Juan, I'll take a closer look into the cause of my issues.</div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Jul 2, 2026 at 10:49 AM Juan Vuletich <<a href="mailto:juan@cuis.st">juan@cuis.st</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
<div>
<p>And what you actually want is most likely
#asUtf8BytesOrByteString, #asUtf8BytesOrByteStringOrByteArray to
properly handle Unicode. That of course depends on whether the
apis you're calling can handle UTF-8.</p>
<p>Besides, 'abc' is an instance of String. You get a UnicodeString
when you go beyond ASCII. Most apis prefer UTF-8 in that case.</p>
<p>Cheers,</p>
<div>On 2026-07-01 1:59 PM, Juan Vuletich
via Cuis-dev wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p>Well, that boat sailed a long time ago.</p>
<p>The interoperability between (Byte)String and UnicodeString
does exactly the same as interoperability between
SmallInteger/LargeInteger/Fraction/Float. With numbers, this
only matters when dealing with the external world, where you
need to ensure you're using the required primitive type, and not
what Smalltalk choses for you. Same here. #asByteString to the
rescue.</p>
<p>See
<a href="https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev/blob/master/Documentation/Papers/2022-11-UnicodeSupportInCuisSmalltalk.pdf" target="_blank">https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev/blob/master/Documentation/Papers/2022-11-UnicodeSupportInCuisSmalltalk.pdf</a></p>
<p>Hope this helps,</p>
<div>On 2026-07-01 11:59 AM, Phil B via
Cuis-dev wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Sorry... forgot to reply all.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>To put it more succinctly: rather than assume that
anywhere you have a string/stream it's just as good to
substitute a Unicode string/stream, it really seems like it
should be opt-in via #asUnicodeString or #asUniFileStream
for coercion or explicit at instance creation time. That
makes the contract clear and you don't get something other
than what you want/need.</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Jul 1, 2026 at
11:52 AM Phil B <<a href="mailto:pbpublist@gmail.com" target="_blank">pbpublist@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">I hear what you're saying but that assumption
breaks a lot of code. They are *similar* to String, but
they are actually very different creatures and only
superficially protocol compatible<span style="background-color:transparent">. (i.e. you often
cannot substitute a UnicodeString for a String without
severely breaking things... even when 'String' is
nowhere in the source code that breaks) I have had to
ugly up a lot of code to get out of the implicit opt-in
to Unicode that Cuis has done on this front.[1] Please
don't rename String... that would make things 100x
worse.</span>
<div><span style="background-color:transparent"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color:transparent">[1] </span><span style="background-color:transparent">i.e. 'where the
hell did that UnicodeString come from?' when I didn't
want it... usually when dealing with a DNU error
dialog. Even when I resolve the DNU, the breakage
often continues on down the chain because you can't
just substitute UnicodeString for String when you're
dealing with FFI, web APIs, file formats etc.</span></div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Jul 1, 2026 at
11:16 AM Juan Vuletich <<a href="mailto:juan@cuis.st" target="_blank">juan@cuis.st</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Hi
Phil,<br>
<br>
On 2026-07-01 10:27 AM, Phil B via Cuis-dev wrote:<br>
> Is there a reason UnicodeString asString returns
self rather than a <br>
> String?<br>
><br>
Yes. UnicodeStrings are conceptually Strings. Perhaps
we'd rename String <br>
as ByteString, and CharacterSequence as String.<br>
<br>
In any case, just use #asByteString that does what you
want.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
-- <br>
Juan Vuletich<br>
<a href="http://www.cuis.st" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">www.cuis.st</a><br>
<a href="http://github.com/jvuletich" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">github.com/jvuletich</a><br>
<a href="http://researchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletich" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">researchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletich</a><br>
<a href="http://independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich</a><br>
<a href="http://patents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletich" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">patents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletich</a><br>
<br>
</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
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<br>
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<pre cols="72">--
Juan Vuletich
<a href="http://www.cuis.st" target="_blank">www.cuis.st</a>
<a href="http://github.com/jvuletich" target="_blank">github.com/jvuletich</a>
<a href="http://researchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletich" target="_blank">researchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletich</a>
<a href="http://independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich" target="_blank">independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich</a>
<a href="http://patents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletich" target="_blank">patents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletich</a></pre>
<br>
<fieldset></fieldset>
</blockquote>
<pre cols="72">--
Juan Vuletich
<a href="http://www.cuis.st" target="_blank">www.cuis.st</a>
<a href="http://github.com/jvuletich" target="_blank">github.com/jvuletich</a>
<a href="http://researchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletich" target="_blank">researchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletich</a>
<a href="http://independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich" target="_blank">independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich</a>
<a href="http://patents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletich" target="_blank">patents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletich</a></pre>
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