Hi everyone,
Recently I upgraded to R 4.2.1 which now uses UTF-8 internally as its
native encoding. Very nice. However, I've discovered that if I use
writeClipboard to try and move a string containing accented characters
to the Windows clipboard and then try and paste that into another
application (e.g. notepad, Eclipse, etc.), the accents turn out all
garbled. Here's an example:
writeClipboard("categor?a")
Pasting the result into this e-mail message yields
Categor??a
As near as I can tell, the problem seems to have something to do with
the format parameter of writeClipboard. By default, format has a value
of 1, which tells the clipboard to receive Text in the machine's locale.
If I set format=13 in the call, the accents transfer to the clipboard
correctly:
writeClipboard("categor?a", format=13)
and the result is
Categor?a
It seems that format=13 may be a better default now that R is using
UTF-8. It would be nice not to have to specify the format every time I
want to copy text to the clipboard with writeClipboard.
Is writeClipboard supposed to perform any kind of encoding conversion or
is the format parameter merely informing the clipboard of the kind of
payload it's being handed?
Btw, with pre-4.2.0 versions of R, this wasn't a problem. I am very much
in favour of R using some kind of Unicode encoding natively, but this
wrinkle seems to be something the user shouldn't have to deal with since
the Windows clipboard is capable of holding Unicode text. Any advice
would be gratefully received.
Thanks,
Andrew.
Hello,
I can reproduce this.
C:\Users\ruipb>R -q -e "writeClipboard('categor?a');
sessionInfo()"
> writeClipboard('categor?a'); sessionInfo()
R version 4.2.1 (2022-06-23 ucrt)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 22000)
Matrix products: default
locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=Portuguese_Portugal.utf8 LC_CTYPE=Portuguese_Portugal.utf8
[3] LC_MONETARY=Portuguese_Portugal.utf8 LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=Portuguese_Portugal.utf8
attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_4.2.1
# quoting Andrew: Pasting the result into this e-mail message yields
categor??a
And with the same sessionInfo() output
R -q -e "writeClipboard('categor?a', format = 13)"
# <Ctrl+V> paste clipboard here
categor?a
Hope this helps,
Rui Barradas
?s 14:05 de 30/09/2022, Andrew Hart via R-help escreveu:> Hi everyone,
>
> Recently I upgraded to R 4.2.1 which now uses UTF-8 internally as its
> native encoding. Very nice. However, I've discovered that if I use
> writeClipboard to try and move a string containing accented characters
> to the Windows clipboard and then try and paste that into another
> application (e.g. notepad, Eclipse, etc.), the accents turn out all
> garbled. Here's an example:
>
> writeClipboard("categor?a")
> Pasting the result into this e-mail message yields
> Categor??a
>
> As near as I can tell, the problem seems to have something to do with
> the format parameter of writeClipboard. By default, format has a value
> of 1, which tells the clipboard to receive Text in the machine's
locale.
> If I set format=13 in the call, the accents transfer to the clipboard
> correctly:
>
> writeClipboard("categor?a", format=13)
> and the result is
> Categor?a
>
> It seems that format=13 may be a better default now that R is using
> UTF-8. It would be nice not to have to specify the format every time I
> want to copy text to the clipboard with writeClipboard.
>
> Is writeClipboard supposed to perform any kind of encoding conversion or
> is the format parameter merely informing the clipboard of the kind of
> payload it's being handed?
>
> Btw, with pre-4.2.0 versions of R, this wasn't a problem. I am very
much
> in favour of R using some kind of Unicode encoding natively, but this
> wrinkle seems to be something the user shouldn't have to deal with
since
> the Windows clipboard is capable of holding Unicode text. Any advice
> would be gratefully received.
>
> Thanks,
> ????Andrew.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Hi Andrew, On 9/30/22 15:05, Andrew Hart via R-help wrote:> Hi everyone, > > Recently I upgraded to R 4.2.1 which now uses UTF-8 internally as its > native encoding. Very nice. However, I've discovered that if I use > writeClipboard to try and move a string containing accented characters > to the Windows clipboard and then try and paste that into another > application (e.g. notepad, Eclipse, etc.), the accents turn out all > garbled. Here's an example: > > writeClipboard("categor?a") > Pasting the result into this e-mail message yields > Categor??a > > As near as I can tell, the problem seems to have something to do with > the format parameter of writeClipboard. By default, format has a value > of 1, which tells the clipboard to receive Text in the machine's > locale. If I set format=13 in the call, the accents transfer to the > clipboard correctly: > > writeClipboard("categor?a", format=13) > and the result is > Categor?aIvan Krylov has kindly turned this into a bug report, please see https://bugs.r-project.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18412 for more details. In short, yes, using format=13 is recommended, but please note it has already been documented in ?writeClipboard.> It seems that format=13 may be a better default now that R is using > UTF-8. It would be nice not to have to specify the format every time I > want to copy text to the clipboard with writeClipboard.Yes, I agree, I've changed the default to format=13.> Is writeClipboard supposed to perform any kind of encoding conversion > or is the format parameter merely informing the clipboard of the kind > of payload it's being handed? > > Btw, with pre-4.2.0 versions of R, this wasn't a problem. I am very > much in favour of R using some kind of Unicode encoding natively, but > this wrinkle seems to be something the user shouldn't have to deal > with since the Windows clipboard is capable of holding Unicode text. > Any advice would be gratefully received.This is a bit complicated and more can be found in the bug report response. In short, the clipboard is capable of holding either "text" (then with locale information) or "Unicode text". One can ask Windows for either content and Windows will do the conversion, it would convert from "text" to "Unicode text" using that locale. If that locale is not filled in explicitly, it is the current input language (so the "keyboard" the user has selected at the time of the copying to clipboard, e.g. of writeClipboard). If that locale encoding doesn't match the R current native encoding, and you are using "text", characters may be mis-represented. This could have happened even before R 4.2.0, but is more likely from R 4.2.0 when it uses UTF-8. Going via "Unicode text" resolves the issue as the conversion to/from UTF-16LE is done by readClipboard/writeClipboard using the R current native encoding. Users who don't want to deal with these complexities can use the higher-level connections interface (?connections, "clipboard"). Best Tomas> > Thanks, > ????Andrew. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.