1.7. Character Sets and Encodings

• X Portable Character Set .IP A basic set of 97 characters, which are assumed to exist in all locales supported by Xlib. This set contains the following characters:

  a..z A..Z 0..9 !"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\\]^_`{|}~ <space>, <tab>, and <newline>

  This set is the left/lower half of the graphic character set of ISO8859-1 plus space, tab, and newline. It is also the set of graphic characters in 7-bit ASCII plus the same three control characters. The actual encoding of these characters on the host is system dependent.

• Host Portable Character Encoding

  The encoding of the X Portable Character Set on the host. The encoding itself is not defined by this standard, but the encoding must be the same in all locales supported by Xlib on the host. If a string is said to be in the Host Portable Character Encoding, then it only contains characters from the X Portable Character Set, in the host encoding.

• Latin-1

  The coded character set defined by the ISO8859-1 standard.

• Latin Portable Character Encoding

  The encoding of the X Portable Character Set using the Latin-1 codepoints plus ASCII control characters. If a string is said to be in the Latin Portable Character Encoding, then it only contains characters from the X Portable Character Set, not all of Latin-1.

• STRING Encoding

  Latin-1, plus tab and newline.

• POSIX Portable Filename Character Set

  The set of 65 characters, which can be used in naming files on a POSIX-compliant host, that are correctly processed in all locales. The set is:

  a..z A..Z 0..9 ._-

Next: Formatting Conventions