Chinese text input is garbled because UTF-8 input is forwarded byte-by-byte

Also see #212

Summary

Typing Chinese characters into text fields in Carbonyl produces garbled characters instead of the expected text.

For example, when typing 你好 into a search/input field, Carbonyl displays incorrect characters. This appears to happen even when the host terminal and container locale are configured for UTF-8.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Run Carbonyl:

   bash复制

   docker run --rm -ti fathyb/carbonyl https://google.com

2. Focus the search input.

3. Type or paste Chinese text, for example:

   复制

   你好

Expected Behavior

The input field should contain:

你好

Actual Behavior

The input field shows garbled/incorrect characters.

Environment

• Carbonyl version: 0.0.3 / Docker image fathyb/carbonyl
• Terminal locale: UTF-8, for example LANG=en_US.UTF-8 or LANG=C.UTF-8
• OS / terminal:

Technical Notes

This looks like an input handling issue rather than a terminal rendering issue.

From the current source code:

• Key.char is stored as u8
• src/input/parser.rs emits one KeyPress per input byte
• src/browser/bridge.rs casts the byte to c_char
• the Chromium bridge receives OnKeyPressInput(char key)
• the Chromium patch writes only event.text[0] = key
• there is already a TODO(fathy): support IME near this code path

This means UTF-8 multi-byte characters such as Chinese characters are split into multiple byte-level key events instead of being submitted as Unicode/IME text.

Suggested Fix

Carbonyl likely needs a separate text input path for Unicode/IME text, distinct from key events used for arrows, shortcuts, backspace, etc.

For example:

1. Add an input event such as TextInput(String) on the Rust side.

2. Decode UTF-8 text from stdin/paste/IME input instead of forwarding each byte as a KeyPress.

3. Add an FFI bridge method such as:

   cpp复制

   void (*text_input)(const char* utf8);

4. In the Chromium integration, convert UTF-8 to UTF-16 and commit it as text input / IME text, rather than pretending each byte is a keyboard key.

This should allow Chinese and other non-ASCII text input to work correctly.