Re: Building multiple backends on on same system

[Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Benjamin Otte <otte gnome org> wrote:
> While we're talking about getting rid of stuff, I'd like to get rid of
>> gdk_utf8_to_string_target
>> gdk_string_to_compound_text_for_display
>> gdk_utf8_to_compound_text_for_display
>> gdk_free_text_list
>> gdk_free_compound_text
>
> But I lack enough clue about selections to do that. Is there anyone
> with enough clue that could find an API that can do this?
> The biggest problem I have with these APIs is that either they should
> be used (in which case we need to make sure people actually use them
> when they have to by introducing GdkCompoundText etc types) or they
> should not be used and the gdk selection code should take care of
> them. But the current situation is that even people who worked on the
> DND code have no idea what it's for. (I asked in #gtk+ and nobody had
> any clue.)
>

Compound text is an old multi-charset encoding (in the spirit of iso
2022, from before the rise of unicode).  The ICCCM specifies the a
some (mostly obsolete) properties are to be set in this encoding,
unless I misremember, and selection owners are probably also expected
to handle it if it is requested.

It has very little relevance in todays Unicode-dominated world, and we
should probably look if we move the support for this entirely into the
X11 backend and not expose it in apis.