IMO, windows VM (and plugins) should do the UCS2 -> UTF8 conversion because the purpose of a VM is to provide an OS independant fa��ade.
I made progress recently in this area, but we should finish the job/test/consolidate.
I'm following your changes for windows from the shadows and I think they are awesome :).
��
If someone bypass the VM and use direct windows API thru FFI, then he takes the responsibility, but uniformity doesn't hurt.
��So far we are using FFI for this, as you say we create first Win32WideStrings from utf8 strings and then we use ffi calls to the *W functions.
I don't think we can make it for Pharo7.0.0. The cycle to build, do some acceptance tests, and then bless a new VM as stable is far too long for our inminent release :).
But this could be for a 7.1.0, and if you like I can surely give a hand on this.
Guille