UTF-8 selections (was: Xterm now has UTF-8 support)

From: Juliusz Chroboczek (jec@dcs.ed.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Jun 10 1999 - 07:13:45 EDT


On a related note, I'd be interested to know what people suggest for
selections encoded in UTF-8. After looking at a number of X11
applications[1], I've found that no two applications use the same
scheme, and most are significantly flawed. In conclusion, it is
currently impossible to reliably cut and paste Unicode text between
*different* applications under X11 (cutting and pasting between
instances of the same application should be fine, except probably on
mondays with a full moon).

For this reason, I've been thinking about designing and implementing a
potential standard. The idea would be to register a new atom name
UTF-8 used both as a selection target (requesting UTF-8 encoded text,
for Unicode 2.0 or larger, with any control characters that the
selection holder can provide), as well as a property type (containing
text as above).

Any thoughts? Any information about /de facto/ standards?

Sincerely,

                                        J.

[1] If you're interested, I'd be glad to share my empirical data by
private e-mail (no slagging off of specific commercial software in
public -- only generic ranting).



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