Unescaping uris

[Jesse van den Kieboom <jesse icecrew nl>]

Hi,

gedit recently received a bug
(http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=355477) about multibyte
characters not being display properly.

I've been looking into the problem and I've encountered some things
about unescaping that I don't really understand. As I understand there
are functions to unescape uris and functions to format uris for display
that all do approximately the same, but differ in a way I don't fully
understand.

gnome_vfs_unescape_string
gnome_vfs_unescape_string_for_display
gnome_vfs_format_uri_for_display

What I'd like to know is what to use when, because they differ in
behavior (especially for non file:// schemes). Some examples (python)
with a file called フ.txt:

gnomevfs.unescape_string('file:///%E3%83%95.txt', '')
-> 'file:///%E3%83%95.txt'

gnomevfs.unescape_string('sftp:///%E3%83%95.txt', '')
-> 'sftp:///%E3%83%95.txt'

So, what does unescape_string actually do? I read that I shouldn't use
it on full uri's. Okay, so what should I use on full uri's? Over to the
display functions:

gnomevfs.unescape_string_for_display('file:///%E3%83%95.txt')
-> 'file:///\xe3\x83\x95.txt'

gnomevfs.unescape_string_for_display('sftp:///%E3%83%95.txt')
-> 'sftp:///\xe3\x83\x95.txt'

Okay, so this one actually does what's expected, but what are these
functions for in relation to format_uri_for_display:

gnomevfs.format_uri_for_display('file:///%E3%83%95.txt')
-> '/\xe3\x83\x95.txt'

gnomevfs.format_uri_for_display('sftp:///%E3%83%95.txt')
-> 'sftp:///%E3%83%95.txt'


In short, unescape_string_for_display seems to do about the same as
format_uri_for_display, but format_uri_for_display removes the file
scheme (which is what we are looking for in gedit). But, using
format_uri_for_display on remote file schemes does not properly unescape
the uri (which unescape_string_for_display does correctly). Is this a
bug? If not, what's the rationale for not unescaping remote uris in
format_uri_for_display. Should we use format_uri_for_display for local
files and unescape_string_for_display on remote files? 

What I'd like to know is what the differences between the functions are
and when to use what.

With kind regards,


-- 
Jesse van den Kieboom

Visit: http://www.icecrew.nl