Hi all,

If you use the translations unit to translate unit resources strings, then (even after stripping all debug info and using smart linking etc) this will add about 1 Mb to the executable size.

This seems due to the fact that the
function ConvertEncoding(const s, FromEncoding, ToEncoding: string): string; from lconvencoding unit is linked in.

It is used to translate the contents of po-files that are not utf-8 into utf-8.

A quick scan in the FreePascal and Lazarus source directories shows that there are no .po files specifying non-utf8 encoding.

There are some files that do not specify an encoding, but ConvertEncoding leaves them untouched.

I found these files without encoding (in the first 25 lines of text): ($FpcSource)\packages\fcl-base\examples\intl\restest.fr.po ($FpcSource)\packages\fcl-base\examples\intl\resttest.po ($FpcSource)\packages\fcl-base\examples\intl\restest.pb.po ($FpcSource)\packages\fcl-base\examples\intl\restest.de.po ($FpcSource)\packages\fcl-base\examples\intl\restest.nl.po ($FpcSource)\utils\fpdoc\intl\dwriter.de.po
($FpcSource)\utils\fpdoc\intl\makeskel.de.po
($FpcSource)\utils\fpdoc\intl\dglobals.de.po
($FpcSource)\utils\fpdoc\intl\fpdoc.de.po

(B.t.w. there is no sanity check in ConvertEncoding for empty FromEncoding or ToEncoding parameter)

If we would specify that all fpc and lazarus .po files _must_ be in utf-8, we can drop the lconvencoding unit from translations.pas, and strip 1 Mb from the executable filesize.

(Tested on Windows platform only)

I know there have been lots of discussions about executable filesize and 1 Mb doesn't seem much. But if you are short on webspace (where you offer the executables for download) then it does matter.

Your opnions please?

Bart