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Re: cut and paste for chinese in x window system



Hello zhaoway,

It is a clever idea but I don't know if most applications
support cut and paste. Sure it is in the icccm but its support
is not mandatory. Of course there are some applications do not
support XIM but have cut-and-paste support, so it could be
useful.

The thing is how do you have the client know when to paste.
Okey, the middle-mouse key is an convention for this but it
is just a convention. Some application might use ctrl-v (okey,
it is a MS convention) and ctrl-insert could be also a reasonable
convention. If you don't tell the client to 'fetchbuffter',
the 'cut' can never get pasted.

Beside, why string type cannot be used for Chinese charactors?
There should be not special treatement on pasted strings. Could
you tell us what happened? " the problem is that CUT_BUFFER0 is
a string type, can't being used to describe chinese character,
japanese..." is not very clear to me. Maybe some applications
do char-conversion internally (like xcin use unicode as internal
encoding scheme, of course xcin is not used in this approach, just
an example), so that could be one of the problems.

Besides, what if the intended client does not use compound text?
The principle of X seems to be you can do anything but you are
not asked to do anything.
 
Whatever cut-n-paste buffer is used is a client implementation.
Debian or X does not force any of them.

To me, it is cool but not really practical for common usage. But
since cool is all our linux user care, go for it!


PS: I believe a lot of people use cut-and-paste to do Chinese
input under netscape before and now. So it should not be a problem.

I don't know what I am talking about.... ;(

Friday, January 21, 2000, 1:32:15 AM, you wrote:

z> does anyone here has any success story on cut-and-paste chinese
z> characters between x clients, like gimp/xterm, netscape/emacs?
z> (the emacs maybe far too complicated here.)

z> i mean it _should_ work, while all people are only concering the xim
z> and/or X-TT and/or various coding standards
z> here right now. this _should_ _work_ _too_! what about it? please?

z> the points are:

z> 1) the default debian settings for cut-and-paste behavior under x window
z> is to use CUT_BUFFER0 (as described in ICCCM, you can use 

z> $ xprop -id 'root-window-id'

z> to get it. the problem is that CUT_BUFFER0 is a string type, can't being
z> used to describe chinese character, japanese as well, or as bad.

z> the solution, according to ICCCM, is that to use CLIPBOARD selection, or
z> PRIMARY or SECONDARY selection. you can use

z> $ xclipboard

z> to have a rough idea. But, but i have no way to get it run! (That
z> `bingo' yesterday evening was fault. //sigh) How can i use the CLIPBOARD
z> selection? That is the only way to use cut-and-paste for chinese under
z> x window system, AFAIK. 'casue the `selection' mechanism support 
z> COMPOUND_TEXT. see xbooks/CTEXT in debian.

z> the point is that cut-and-paste _should_ work, for users. not only an
z> xim. please!



Best regards,
 hashao                            mailto:hashao@telebot.com



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