Copy/Paste problems when contains non-ascii characters

[Harold L Hunt II]

Jay,

Your problem is that you are using Windows 95, which does not natively 
support unicode text.  There is support in Cygwin/XFree86 for converting 
characters to unicode and back, but it only works on NT-based platforms 
(NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003).

The Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 95/98/Me Systems should allow 
the support to work properly, but we would have to change the unicode 
support detection slightly for this to take effect.  Have you installed 
the unicode support for Windows 95?  More information and a link to 
download are here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/devnotes/winprog/microsoft_layer_for_unicode_on_windows_95_98_me_systems.asp

Or, the tiny url to the same thing:

http://tinyurl.com/qo9n


Hmm... just did some more checking... using the Layer for Unicode 
support will not be trivial.  Kensuke may be interested in it as an 
alternative to using libiconv on Windows 95/98/Me.

As for why you text copying is truncated vs. not appearing at all, I 
suspect that Mozilla 1.2.x to 1.4 changed the format of some clipboard 
data from plain text to INCR.  But that would only make sense if you 
have only tried this with the versions of XFree86-xserv that don't crash 
when they see an INCR clipboard format.  If you didn't try this until 
recently, then that would explain your problem.  You should at least be 
thankful that XWin.exe doesn't core dump like it used to in these cases.

In summary, your problem is known, it isn't trivial to solve, and the 
change from Mozilla 1.2.x to 1.4 is due to a change that they made, not 
something that we did.  Also, your issue is already known to be not an 
issue on NT-based platforms, so the Microsoft answer to this problem 
would be "The Cygwin/XFree86 has identified this to be a problem with 
the products listed above.", with the idea being that they might fix it 
or they might not, but perhaps you should consider upgrading to a more 
recent version of Windows.  In other words, you are more likely to get 
your problem fixed by spending $200 of your own money upgrading to 
Windows XP, versus me spending $2000 of my time to cobble together a fix 
for Windows 95/98/Me.  That's just being honest.

Thanks for testing,

Harold

Jay Smith wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> My copy/paste behavior in MOZILLA running on RedHat 8 LINUX has gone 
> from bad to worse when I upgraded the Mozilla from 1.2.x to 1.4.
> 
> Important: The Mozilla is LINUX Mozilla running on an RH8 server.  I am 
> sitting at a Windows 95 PC, using Cygwin/XFree86 to run an X session on 
> the PC.  I am sitting at a PC, not at a Linux box.  (Most people don't 
> get this and thus reply using wrong assumptions.)
> 
> WHEN RUNNING Linux Mozilla ON PC USING CYGWIN:
> 
> (old) MOZ 1.2.x: When I copied text that contained a non-ascii typical 
> European or Scandinavian character from an existing email and PASTED 
> INTO A MOZILLA MAIL COMPOSE window, the text up to, but NOT including, 
> the character would copy AND PASTE. That was bad, but at least you got 
> something (the text before the character).
> 
> (new) MOZ 1.4: However, now, if the copy contains such a character, 
> NOTHING gets pasted into A MOZILLA MAIL COMPOSE window.  It changed from 
> partial to nothing.
> 
> I AM still able to paste full and properly into windows applications 
> from Mozilla, including such common European and Scandinvian characters.
> 
> Because there has been no change to the Cygwin installation on this PC, I
> don't think the *change* in the problem is related to that.  However, 
> the root of the problem seems to be related to Cygwin.
> 
> By contrast, IF I AM WORKING DIRECTLY/PHYSICALLY ON THE LINUX SERVER:
> 
> Mozilla 1.2.x or 1.4: I *CAN* fully and properly cut/paste the very same 
> text.
> 
> MY ENVIRONMENT IS:
> 
> Server: Red Hat Linux 8
> 
> Workstation: Windows 95 running Cygwin ....
> (I think these are the version numbers of what I have installed; they 
> were as of April 2003 and I don't think I have installed any new Cygwin 
> stuff on this machine since then -- but I don't know how to find out 
> what versions I am running. How do I?)
>   XFree86-base     4.2.0-1
>          -lib      4.2.0-5
>          -xserv    4.2.0-28
>          -xwinclip 4.2.0-8
> 
> Jay