GdkWChar (was: Added a bunch of GDK routines.)

[Kevin Ryde <user42 at zip dot com dot au>]

Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> writes:
>
>  - gdk-1.2.defs: Defined an alias GdkWChar for uint for
>    gdk_draw_text_wc. (I trust uint to correspond to guint32 because
>    currently there is no alternative.)

Presumably one day guile will get its own notion of chars bigger than
a byte.  Probably no alternative to plain integers until then.  I'm
thinking the words below can cover the present situation at least.


[General conventions:]

Strings
     Gtk generally uses strings encoded in UTF-8.  Guile (version 1.6)
     has no direct notion of multi-byte characters in strings, so
     applications will need to take care when in a non-ASCII or
     non-Latin locale.

     Converting to `GdkWChar' with `gdk-mbstowc' (*note Gdk Module::) is
     one way to identify character boundaries at least.


[Gdk Module:]

`GdkWChar'
     Currently `GdkWChar' values are represented as integers, and
     `GdkWChar' strings as vectors of integers.  So for instance
     `gdk-mbstowc' returns such a vector (or `#f' if conversion fails).

     Note that this representation might change in the future if Guile
     gets its own notion of characters bigger than 8 bits.