Kotlin is commonly thought of as a way to write Android apps, but you can also target:

1. Plain Java
2. JavaScript
3. Native

So I'm working on a Kotlin/Multiplatform library that lets Kotlin developers have UTF encoding/decoding capabilities in Kotlin code that can run on any of these targets.

https://github.com/wswartzendruber/unikode/tree/main/unikode/src/commonMain/kotlin

Now...my brain is thoroughly fried.

What was the motivation to build this?

Isn't there already something in the standard Java libraries or Kotlin to do character encoding?

What does this do that the standard libraries don't?

The Kotlin/Multiplatform API is a very, very small subset of the larger Java or JS APIs.

A component targeting the JVM gets access to the full Java API. A component targeting JS gets full access to Node (or whatever). But a library meant to run on all of them gets the bare-bones Kotlin/Multiplatform API. And that basically includes basic types, collections, and nothing else.

What I ultimately want to do is build a standard library for Kotlin/Multiplatform. For things like file and network I/O. Character encoding is going to be a part of that. After all, why shouldn't Kotlin/Multiplatform libraries be able to deal with I/O?

I had forgotten how truly bletcherous Java is/can be. Keep fighting the good fight OP.

Attached File


I'm going back to my motor control software in C.

This.