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"X11 Control Characters" encoding

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bill...@alum.mit.edu

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May 21, 2007, 2:17:15 AM5/21/07
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The list returned by [encoding names] includes a so-called encoding
labelled "X11 Control Characters". However, I've never heard of such
an encoding and there is no enc file for this. Can anyone tell me what
this is supposed to be? Thanks.

Kevin Kenny

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May 21, 2007, 8:48:22 AM5/21/07
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It's a fake encoding that we use to process text that's going into a
Tk widget. The font substitution mechanism allows for encoding
conversion, so Unicode CJK text, for instance, can be displayed
in an euc-cn or Big Five font. We abuse this mechanism a little
bit by putting in a dummy fallback font at the end of the search.
A character that has no representation in any font in the system
gets converted to a \xnn or \unnnn string by the X11ControlCharacters
encoding and displayed in an ISO8859-1 font.

Don't you feel better, knowing that? :)

--
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin

bill...@alum.mit.edu

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May 21, 2007, 12:08:41 PM5/21/07
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On May 21, 5:48 am, Kevin Kenny <kenn...@acm.org> wrote:

Ah, thanks. Among other things, it is useful to know because there is
no point in presenting users with this choice of encoding. And I like
to think that I know every encoding, though that is no doubt a futile
task.

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