Subject: Re: bug#45: 23.0.60; Can't paste from files with .arc extensions

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:19:14 -0400

>>> OK, we'll leave the matter as it stands.  Tagging as wontfix.
>> 
>> Not sure if I agree with this.
>> Which applications accept the C_STRING?
>> I mean, if Firefox doesn't accept it, it's likely many others refuse it
>> as well.  Why not treat the binary as Latin-1 and sent it as STRING?
>> 
>> Are there cases where it's known to cause problems?

> Apart from Firefox, GTK applications don't accept C_STRING, while xterm
> does.

> IIUC, Handa's argument is that a unibyte buffer typically represents
> binary data, so it's more correct to tag it as C_STRING.  If other
> applications choose to refuse C_STRING because they don't think it
> generally maps to Latin-1 output, that's their choice.

I understand that.  It's the theory.  The practice is that it implies
that cut&paste fails between Emacs and Gtk applications in some cases.
Maybe it's OK.  But it's a definite downside.

What would be the downside *in practice* of labelling our binary data as
STRING (i.e. latin-1)?

        Stefan