; Improve documentation of 'gui-get-selection' use on X

* doc/lispref/frames.texi (Window System Selections):
* lisp/select.el (gui-get-selection): Suggest to use an explicit
DATA-TYPE when calling 'gui-get-selection'.

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/lisp/select.el b/lisp/select.el
index d8e97f33001..59eedc79263 100644
--- a/lisp/select.el
+++ b/lisp/select.el
@@ -372,10 +372,15 @@ all upper-case names.  The most often used ones, in addition to
 `PRIMARY', are `SECONDARY' and `CLIPBOARD'.
 
 DATA-TYPE is usually `STRING', but can also be one of the symbols
-in `selection-converter-alist', which see.  Window systems other
-than X usually support only a small subset of these symbols, in
-addition to `STRING'; MS-Windows supports `TARGETS', which reports
-the formats available in the clipboard if TYPE is `CLIPBOARD'."
+in `selection-converter-alist', which see.  On X, we recommend
+to always use a specific DATA-TYPE expected from the selection
+owner.  In particular, if the data is expected to be non-ASCII
+text, in many cases using \\='UTF8_STRING is the most reasonable
+value for DATA-TYPE.
+
+Window systems other than X usually support only a small subset of
+these symbols, in addition to `STRING'; MS-Windows supports `TARGETS',
+which reports the formats available in the clipboard if TYPE is `CLIPBOARD'."
   (let ((data (gui-backend-get-selection (or type 'PRIMARY)
                                          (or data-type 'STRING))))
     (when (and (stringp data)