bug#8517: Can't handle utf8 encoded filenames in locale 'de_DE.utf8'

bug#8517: Can't handle utf8 encoded filenames in locale 'de_DE.utf8'

[Rob Browning]

(If possible, please preserve the 611396-forwarded address in any replies.)

Gernot Kieseritzky writes:

> Opening an existing file named "ÖÄÜß.txt" does not work, instead,
> Emacs creates a new buffer with the same name (reported correctly)
> which is empty.  After saving the file name is corrupted displaying as
> "???.txt" on the console.  Nautilus reports a "wrong encoding" and
> equally display three question marks instead of the "Umlauts".  In
> contrast, in Ubuntu 10.04 utf8 encoded file names create no problems
> for Emacs.

It turns out that the problem was being caused by this call from .emacs:

  (current-language-environment "German")

which appears to make Emacs prefer latin-1.

I wasn't sure if this should be considered an actual problem, or just a
configuration error, so I thought I should forward it.

Please see http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=611396 for
further details.

Thanks
-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org
GPG as of 2002-11-03 14DD 432F AE39 534D B592 F9A0 25C8 D377 8C7E 73A4

bug#8517: Can't handle utf8 encoded filenames in locale 'de_DE.utf8'

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org> writes:

> It turns out that the problem was being caused by this call from .emacs:
>
>   (current-language-environment "German")
>
> which appears to make Emacs prefer latin-1.
>
> I wasn't sure if this should be considered an actual problem, or just a
> configuration error, so I thought I should forward it.

I think this is working as it's supposed t.  The "German" environment is
apparently defined as follows:

 ("German"
  (documentation . "This language environment is almost the same as Latin-1,\nbut sets the default input method to \"german-postfix\".\nAdditionally, it selects the German tutorial.")
  (sample-text . "German (Deutsch Nord)	Guten Tag\nGerman (Deutsch Süd)	Grüß Gott")
  (unibyte-display . iso-latin-1)
  (input-method . "german-postfix")
  (nonascii-translation . iso-8859-1)
  (coding-priority iso-latin-1)
  (coding-system iso-latin-1 iso-latin-9)
  (charset iso-8859-1)
  (tutorial . "TUTORIAL.de"))

So while it may be surprising in this day and age that that's what this
does, I don't think the definition can be changed (because that'd break
the setup of people who rely on "German" to be iso-8859-1).

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#8517: Can't handle utf8 encoded filenames in locale 'de_DE.utf8'

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 13:56:32 -0700
> Cc: 8517@debbugs.gnu.org, 611396-forwarded@bugs.debian.org,
>  Gernot Kieseritzky <gernotk@gmail.com>
> 
>  ("German"
>   (documentation . "This language environment is almost the same as Latin-1,\nbut sets the default input method to \"german-postfix\".\nAdditionally, it selects the German tutorial.")
>   (sample-text . "German (Deutsch Nord)	Guten Tag\nGerman (Deutsch Süd)	Grüß Gott")
>   (unibyte-display . iso-latin-1)
>   (input-method . "german-postfix")
>   (nonascii-translation . iso-8859-1)
>   (coding-priority iso-latin-1)
>   (coding-system iso-latin-1 iso-latin-9)
>   (charset iso-8859-1)
>   (tutorial . "TUTORIAL.de"))
> 
> So while it may be surprising in this day and age that that's what this
> does, I don't think the definition can be changed (because that'd break
> the setup of people who rely on "German" to be iso-8859-1).

Not sure why this is even important.  By default, Emacs takes the
codeset part (i.e. the encoding it prefers) from the locale.  the
above is only important if someone sets the language environment by
hand.  Am I right?

bug#8517: Can't handle utf8 encoded filenames in locale 'de_DE.utf8'

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Not sure why this is even important.  By default, Emacs takes the
> codeset part (i.e. the encoding it prefers) from the locale.  the
> above is only important if someone sets the language environment by
> hand.  Am I right?

You are.

The user had

(current-language-environment "German")

in ~/.emacs, and was surprised that this overrode the LANG settings.
But like I tried to say, that's what that invocation does, so this works
as designed.  (And the user should remove that setting.)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#8517: Can't handle utf8 encoded filenames in locale 'de_DE.utf8'

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> Cc: 8517@debbugs.gnu.org,  611396-forwarded@bugs.debian.org,
>   gernotk@gmail.com,  rlb@defaultvalue.org
> Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2019 02:16:34 +0200
> 
> The user had
> 
> (current-language-environment "German")
> 
> in ~/.emacs, and was surprised that this overrode the LANG settings.
> But like I tried to say, that's what that invocation does, so this works
> as designed.  (And the user should remove that setting.)

The user should either remove that setting or follow it by

  (prefer-coding-system 'WHATEVER)

if the default preferences are not to their liking.