VLERange: a range in between BidirectionalRange and RandomAccessRange

[foobar]

Michel Fortin Wrote:

> What I don't understand is in what way using a string type would make 
> the API less complex and use less templates?
> 
> More generally, in what way would your string type behave differently 
> than char[], wchar[], and dchar[]? I think we need to clarify what how 
> you expect your string type to behave before I can answer anything. I 
> mean, beside cosmetic changes such as having a codePoint property 
> instead of by!dchar or byDchar, what is your string type doing 
> differently?
> 
> The above algorithm is already possible with strings as they are, 
> provided you implement the 'decompose' and the 'compose' function 
> returning a range. In fact, you only changed two things in it: by!dchar 
> became codePoints, and array() became string(). Surely you're expecting 
> more benefits than that.
> 
> -- 
> Michel Fortin
> michel.fortin at michelf.com
> http://michelf.com/
> 

First thing, the question of possibility is irrelevant since I could also write the same algorithm in brainfuck or assembly (with a lot more code). It's never a question of possibility but rather a question of ease of use for the user. 

What I want is to encapsulate all the low-level implementation details in one place so that the as a user I will not need to deal with this everywhere. one such detail is the encoding. 

auto text = w"whatever"; // should be equivalent to:
auto text = new Text("whatever", Encoding.UTF16);

now I want to write my own string function:

void func(Text a); // instead of current:
void func(T)(T a) if isTextType(T); // why the USER needs all this?

Of course, the Text type would do the correct think by default which we both agree should be graphemes. Only if I need something advanced like in the previous algorithm than I explicitly need to specify that I work on code points or code units. 

In a sentence: "Make the common case trivial and the complex case possible". The common case is what we Humans think of as characters (graphemes) and the complex case is the encoding level.