move std.{ascii, base64, utf} to a new encoding package

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, August 08, 2016 19:42:50 Seb via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> today Johannes and I had a short discussion on Github about
>
> std.base64. I think his post is a good summary of the status quo:
> > base64 shouldn't be a top level module though, moving it to a
> > new package std.encoding may be a good idea. std.base64 is just
> > quite old and when it was written we didn't use subpackages in
> > phobos yet. std.utf and std.ascii are also encodings and could
> > be moved to std.encoding as well, AFAICS. And we also have a
> > std.encoding module which should be part of the same package.
>
> That being said I know that such housekeeping isn't liked a lot,
> but with `public import` we can very easily mitigate breakage and
> allow a long deprecation period.
> What's your opinion on this? Any major objections?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Seb
>
> [1]
> https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/4720#issuecomment-238348553

std.encoding needs a complete overhaul. Unfortunately, while I think that
that's generally agreed upon, no one has stepped up to do it. So, who knows
when it'll be fixed. However, given that std.encoding needs an overhaul, I
don't seem much point in moving stuff into it. While it may not be ideal,
base64 works where it is, and we can worry about moving it when std.encoding
is revamped. If we changed it now and then changed it again when
std.encoding got overhauled, then we'd end up breaking code twice just to
move a function around.

- Jonathan M Davis