From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Norbert Eisinger Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.bugs Subject: bug#4816: change of coding system without inquiry Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:19:52 +0100 Message-ID: <4AEAE7F8.6010609@informatik.uni-muenchen.de> References: <4AE77C59.5060106@informatik.uni-muenchen.de> Reply-To: eisinger@informatik.uni-muenchen.de, 4816@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1257048514 19523 80.91.229.12 (1 Nov 2009 04:08:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 04:08:34 +0000 (UTC) Cc: 4816@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com To: Stefan Monnier Original-X-From: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Nov 01 05:08:26 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1N4Rjq-0007r2-U3 for geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:08:23 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:57561 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1N4Rjq-0005of-60 for geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:08:22 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1N3rVj-0006Vf-RC for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:27:23 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1N3rVe-0006Qz-Om for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:27:22 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=50464 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1N3rVe-0006Qs-KU for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:27:18 -0400 Original-Received: from rzlab.ucr.edu ([138.23.92.77]:45760) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1N3rVd-000315-Pj for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:27:18 -0400 Original-Received: from rzlab.ucr.edu (rzlab.ucr.edu [127.0.0.1]) by rzlab.ucr.edu (8.14.3/8.14.3/Debian-5) with ESMTP id n9UDREl6028175; Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:27:14 -0700 Original-Received: (from debbugs@localhost) by rzlab.ucr.edu (8.14.3/8.14.3/Submit) id n9UDP8Qh027804; Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:25:08 -0700 Resent-Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:25:08 -0700 X-Loop: owner@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com Resent-From: Norbert Eisinger Resent-To: bug-submit-list@donarmstrong.com Resent-CC: Emacs Bugs 2Resent-Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:25:07 +0000 Resent-Message-ID: Resent-Sender: owner@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com X-Emacs-PR-Message: followup 4816 X-Emacs-PR-Package: emacs X-Emacs-PR-Keywords: Original-Received: via spool by 4816-submit@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com id=B4816.125690878327209 (code B ref 4816); Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:25:07 +0000 Original-Received: (at 4816) by emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com; 30 Oct 2009 13:19:43 +0000 X-Spam-Bayes: score:0.5 Bayes not run. spammytokens:Tokens not available. hammytokens:Tokens not available. Original-Received: from acheron.ifi.lmu.de (acheron.ifi.lmu.de [129.187.214.135]) by rzlab.ucr.edu (8.14.3/8.14.3/Debian-5) with ESMTP id n9UDJell027206 for <4816@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com>; Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:19:43 -0700 Original-Received: from [10.153.74.162] (koro.pms.ifi.lmu.de [141.84.9.33]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: eisinger) by acheron.ifi.lmu.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 72AFE94A262; Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:19:39 +0100 (CET) User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (X11/20090817) In-Reply-To: X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 2) Resent-Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:27:22 -0400 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:08:15 -0400 X-BeenThere: bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.bugs:32335 Archived-At: Stefan Monnier wrote: > > Could you explain the context in which this problem showed up? > (e.g. tell us why the coding system used matters, whether or not you've > specified the coding-system in a "-*-coding-*-" cookie and why, etc...) Cher Stefan, we are a group in the computer science department of a German university. The group consists of a full professor and an assistant professor and 10 to 15 young scientists with research duties or teaching duties or both. The young scientists typically stay in the group for 3 or 4 years. Our computer environment has for years been a SuSE distribution of Linux with latin-1 locale. Recently it was replaced by a Kubuntu distribution with utf-8 locale. Over the years we have accumulated a large number of latin-1 files that were created and edited by people who are no longer in the group and who used whichever editors they liked. Some files may contain as part of their text content information about the coding system: "\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}" in a LaTeX file, "" in an XML file, "" in an HTML file. Probably there are similar examples for other formats. Depending on the format the files may also contain some form of include mechanism that refers to a different file whose text content contains such coding information. The old files are still being used and edited. Sometimes people have to make just minor modifications to an old file and do not expect major consequences. However, if a minor modification results in a change of the coding system, then the text content of this file and possibly of included files may have to be adapted in order to keep it consistent with the new actual coding system. The colleagues are capable of repairing such inconsistencies, but they may not notice them if the coding system changes silently. This is why I am looking for a way to enforce a prompt whenever the coding system is about to be changed. In our situation there are not very few but very many files encoded with something else than utf-8, and almost all of them contain non-US-ASCII characters. Moreover, we never know by which editors the files were created and subsequently edited. Most of them do not contain "-*-coding-*-" cookies. Therefore the new Emacs-23.2 behavior would probably not cover our case. I don't know how frequent our situation is, but I guess that it is not uncommon in university environments in countries whose language needed one of the ISO-latin extensions of ASCII. Thanks for your time and effort. Norbert