GNU bug report logs - #77994
30.1; Yanking paths or Kanji from Windows produces incorrect behaviour for pgtk build on WSL2

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Package: emacs;

Reported by: Tim Jim <redemptiontea <at> gmail.com>

Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2025 17:26:02 UTC

Severity: normal

Found in version 30.1

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Message #14 received at 77994 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: luangruo <at> yahoo.com, Tim Jim <redemptiontea <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 77994 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#77994: 30.1; Yanking paths or Kanji from Windows produces
 incorrect behaviour for pgtk build on WSL2
Date: Sat, 10 May 2025 12:18:10 +0300
Po Lu, any further comments or suggestions?

> From: Tim Jim <redemptiontea <at> gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2025 23:26:25 +0900
> Cc: Po Lu <luangruo <at> yahoo.com>, 77994 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> 
> Dear Eli,
> 
> Thank you for the tips! I did try setting the encoding to utf-16-le (and a few others for testing) but it just
> resulted in even more of the pasted path becoming even more garbled. 
> 
> I'm not sure why, but when running Emacs compiled without pgtk, the default recording seems to handle the
> paste with no issues. Does the pgtk version handle clipboard contents differently?
> 
> Also just to clarify, I want running Ubuntu but AlmaLinux (so closer to Fedora/RHEL) - I think you might still be
> right though; it's probably something missing rather than the exact distro causing issues.
> 
> Thank you for the ideas so far!
> 
> On Wed, 23 Apr 2025, 20:39 Eli Zaretskii, <eliz <at> gnu.org> wrote:
> 
>  > From: Tim Jim <redemptiontea <at> gmail.com>
>  > Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2025 01:12:15 +0900
>  > 
>  > I've compiled Emacs 30.1 on AlmaLinux 9 running in WSL2 with pgtk; as per the subject, I'm seeing
>  two
>  > separate bugs(?), I think. 
>  > 
>  > I ran a quick comparison using `emacs -Q`, for Emacs compiled with and without `--with-pgtk`.
>  > 
>  > 1. When pasting a path copied from the address bar from Windows Explorer into an Emacs buffer,
>  the path
>  > is usually followed by a bunch of null characters, such as ^@ and ^A. Based on my searching, this
>  could be
>  > an encoding issue, but I could not find an encoding setting which solves this. 
>  > 
>  > 2. Pasting in any Kanji will result in ???? appearing instead of the characters. I can confirm that if I
>  type in
>  > Japanese directly into the buffer, it shows up fine. Just to check it wasn't a GTK on WSL problem, I
>  also fired
>  > up a gedit session and could successfully paste in the Kanji there.
>  > 
>  > Both problems went away when I compiled without `--with-pgtk`. I.e. I could paste in paths without
>  extra null
>  > characters appearing and could paste in Kanji successfully.
>  > 
>  > I'm unsure if this is a bug, or if it's a difference in how system environmental variables are handled.
>  Please
>  > could you give me some pointers on how/if this can be resolved? 
>  > 
>  > Thanks for all your efforts supporting and developing Emacs!
>  > 
>  > P.S. as a quick addendum to point 1, I had also posted an earlier variation of the question that also
>  included
>  > an issue that did turn out to be an encoding issue (trying to paste a degree symbol). That part was
>  solved
>  > using `(setq selection-coding-system nil)`, but the path issue remained, so I suspected it might be a
>  different
>  > problem. https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/s/6w1L3CiyAU
>  > 
>  > If there is anything else I can add to help debug this please let me know. Also, apologies if this is
>  something
>  > obvious that I've missed in the manual. I tried searching the bug tracker too for anything
>  WSL-specific, but I
>  > didn't see anything immediately relevant. 
> 
>  Thanks.
> 
>  We don't have experts on board who know how WSL2 works wrt
>  interoperability between Windows and Ubuntu, so what GTK does in that
>  case is a mystery to us, I think.  I've added Po Lu to the discussion
>  in the hope that he might have some suggestions.
> 
>  I personally have only one idea: try
> 
>    C-x RET x utf-16-le RET
> 
>  and see if this fixes the problems you see.
> 
>  I suspect that WSL2 has some customization options which control how
>  the Windows clipboard is presented to GNU/Linux programs running in
>  Ubuntu.
> 
>  Or maybe you need something to be installed, like xclip or
>  wl-clipboard.




This bug report was last modified 13 days ago.

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