Ansi vs Unicode API

[Denis Koroskin]

I'd like to raise 2 issues for a discussion.

First, Phobos makes calls to different functions, based on the OS we are  
running on (e.g. CreateFileA vs. CreateFileW) and I wonder if it's  
*really* necessary, since Microsoft has a Unicode Layer for those  
Operating Systems.

All an application needs to do to call W API on those OS'es is link with  
unicows.lib (which could be a part of Phobos). It does nothing on Win2k+  
and only triggers on 9x OS family.

A very good overview of it is written here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb688166.aspx

Second, "A" API accepts ansi strings as parameters, not UTF-8 strings. I  
think this should be reflected in the function signatures, since D  
encourages distinguishing between UTF-8 and ANSI strings and not store the  
latter as char[].

LPCSTR currently resolves to char*/const(char)*, but it could be better  
for it to be an alias to ubyte*/const(ubyte)* so that user couldn't pass  
unicode string to an API that doesn't expect one. The same is applicable  
to other APIs, too, for example, how does C stdlib co-operate with  
Unicode? I.e. is core.stdc.stdio.fopen() unicode-aware?

What are your thoughts on the subject?