Re: emacs misbehaves without --unibyte

Re: emacs misbehaves without --unibyte

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Wed, 29 May 2002, Paul Stoeber wrote:

> On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 09:23:11AM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > > I started this thread because default emacs wouldn't let me navigate
> > > filesystems that contain funny filenames, so the "8-bit cleanness"
> > > discussion only applies to file name handling (although I had also
> > > mentioned "text/binary files" in a general statement).
> > 
> > For that, Miles gave the solution: you should set up your language 
> > environment correctly, or set file-name-coding-system explicitly.
> 
> Yes.  If you simply want to use dired as a robust filesystem browser
> (like bash, only more comfortable), regardless of your language
> or the language of who created the files, then
> 
> 	(setq file-name-coding-system 'no-conversion)
> 
> seems to be a solution.

Should we perhaps make no-conversion be the default value of 
file-name-coding-system, instead of nil?

Re: emacs misbehaves without --unibyte

[Miles Bader]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:
> Should we perhaps make no-conversion be the default value of 
> file-name-coding-system, instead of nil?

I presume you mean, if there's no language environment.  Then people
will always see non-ascii characters in filenames as octal escapes,
which I guess is the best that can be done...

-Miles
-- 
`Life is a boundless sea of bitterness'

Re: emacs misbehaves without --unibyte

[Eli Zaretskii]

On 29 May 2002, Miles Bader wrote:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:
> > Should we perhaps make no-conversion be the default value of 
> > file-name-coding-system, instead of nil?
> 
> I presume you mean, if there's no language environment.

Yes.

For some reason, many systems have file-name-coding-system set to nil by 
default (I never had time to find out why), which is bad mantra.

> Then people
> will always see non-ascii characters in filenames as octal escapes,
> which I guess is the best that can be done...

If they use standard-display-8bit, they might even see non-ASCII characters 
instead.

Re: emacs misbehaves without --unibyte

[Robert J. Chassell]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:

    For some reason, many systems have file-name-coding-system set to nil by 
    default (I never had time to find out why), which is bad mantra.

This is because nil is the default setting for
`file-name-coding-system' when for

    emacs -q --no-site-file --eval '(blink-cursor-mode 0)'

from today's CVS snapshot, 2002 May 29 12:39 UTC, 
GNU Emacs 21.3.50.7 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit)
    
It turns out that the documentation for `file-name-coding-system' says

    If it is nil, `default-file-name-coding-system' (which see) is used.

And the default value for `default-file-name-coding-system' is also
nil.

The documentation for `default-file-name-coding-system' refers back
to the documentation for `file-name-coding-system' in a circular loop.

What would be a good value to provide `default-file-name-coding-system'?
It seems odd to:

    (set-language-environment 'English)

[Hmmm... in my test instance of Emacs, the preceding expression does
not change the reported value of `default-file-name-coding-system'; is
this a bug in Emacs or am I doing something wrong?]

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                  bob@rattlesnake.com
    Rattlesnake Enterprises             http://www.rattlesnake.com

Re: emacs misbehaves without --unibyte

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com>
> Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 13:11:23 +0000 (UTC)
> 
> It turns out that the documentation for `file-name-coding-system' says
> 
>     If it is nil, `default-file-name-coding-system' (which see) is used.
> 
> And the default value for `default-file-name-coding-system' is also
> nil.

Indeed.

> What would be a good value to provide `default-file-name-coding-system'?

I thought no-conversion would be good, but it sounds like it isn't.

How about raw-text, will that do better?

Re: emacs misbehaves without --unibyte

[Richard Stallman]

    Should we perhaps make no-conversion be the default value of 
    file-name-coding-system, instead of nil?

That is an interesting idea.  Does anyone see any problems with it?

Re: emacs misbehaves without --unibyte

[Richard Stallman]

    > What would be a good value to provide `default-file-name-coding-system'?

    I thought no-conversion would be good, but it sounds like it isn't.

I think it is vital to investigate why isn't no-conversion a good
choice.  Maybe there is a bug here.  Fixing it may be the best
solution.