\201\236 appearing in emacs.desktop

\201\236 appearing in emacs.desktop

[Sharon Kimble]

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I've a problem that seems to have only developed this morning with my
'emacs.desktop' file. It is being saved with '\201\236' appearing for
each entry which then stops it being reloaded on emacs restart. How can
I kill this problem please and get it back to working sanely again?

Thanks
Sharon.
-- 
A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk
TGmeds = http://www.tgmeds.org.uk
DrugFacts = https://www.drugfacts.org.uk  
Debian 9.0, fluxbox 1.3.5-2, emacs 25.1.1, org-mode 9.0.7

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Re: \201\236 appearing in emacs.desktop

[tomas]

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On Sat, Jul 08, 2017 at 09:46:27AM +0100, Sharon Kimble wrote:
> 
> I've a problem that seems to have only developed this morning with my
> 'emacs.desktop' file. It is being saved with '\201\236' appearing for
> each entry which then stops it being reloaded on emacs restart. How can
> I kill this problem please and get it back to working sanely again?

My encoding crystal ball is pretty fuzzy on this one. At first blush
it looks like a "double UTF-8 encoding" (an UTF-8 two-byte sequence which
has been mistook for a single-byte-encoded-something and re-encoded by
some well-meaning piece of software), but I can't actually identify it
as such. Not sure I could help, but this could help to understand what's
going on:

  - (some of) the output of "describe-coding-system" aka "C-h C"
  - your platform (Gnu/Linux, Mac, Windows, ??)

(given your sig I assume a civilised platform, but better ask ;-)

Cheers
- -- tomás
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Re: \201\236 appearing in emacs.desktop

[Sharon Kimble]

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<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> On Sat, Jul 08, 2017 at 09:46:27AM +0100, Sharon Kimble wrote:
>> 
>> I've a problem that seems to have only developed this morning with my
>> 'emacs.desktop' file. It is being saved with '\201\236' appearing for
>> each entry which then stops it being reloaded on emacs restart. How can
>> I kill this problem please and get it back to working sanely again?
>
> My encoding crystal ball is pretty fuzzy on this one. At first blush
> it looks like a "double UTF-8 encoding" (an UTF-8 two-byte sequence which
> has been mistook for a single-byte-encoded-something and re-encoded by
> some well-meaning piece of software), but I can't actually identify it
> as such. Not sure I could help, but this could help to understand what's
> going on:
>
>   - (some of) the output of "describe-coding-system" aka "C-h C"
>   - your platform (Gnu/Linux, Mac, Windows, ??)
>
> (given your sig I assume a civilised platform, but better ask ;-)
>
Thanks for this Tomas.

I think that this is the answer to what you're saying -

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Coding system for saving this buffer:
  U -- utf-8-unix (alias: mule-utf-8-unix)

Default coding system (for new files):
  U -- utf-8 (alias: mule-utf-8)

Coding system for keyboard input:
  U -- utf-8-unix (alias: mule-utf-8-unix)

Coding system for terminal output:
  U -- utf-8-unix (alias: mule-utf-8-unix)

Coding system for inter-client cut and paste:
  U -- utf-8 (alias: mule-utf-8)

Defaults for subprocess I/O:
  decoding: U -- utf-8-unix (alias: mule-utf-8-unix)

  encoding: U -- utf-8-unix (alias: mule-utf-8-unix)


Priority order for recognizing coding systems when reading files:
  1. utf-8 (alias: mule-utf-8)
  2. iso-2022-7bit 
  3. iso-latin-1 (alias: iso-8859-1 latin-1)
  4. iso-2022-7bit-lock (alias: iso-2022-int-1)
  5. iso-2022-8bit-ss2 
  6. emacs-mule 
  7. raw-text 
  8. iso-2022-jp (alias: junet)
  9. in-is13194-devanagari (alias: devanagari)
  10. chinese-iso-8bit (alias: cn-gb-2312 euc-china euc-cn cn-gb gb2312)
  11. utf-8-auto 
  12. utf-8-with-signature 
  13. utf-16 
  14. utf-16be-with-signature (alias: utf-16-be)
  15. utf-16le-with-signature (alias: utf-16-le)
  16. utf-16be 
  17. utf-16le 
  18. japanese-shift-jis (alias: shift_jis sjis)
  19. chinese-big5 (alias: big5 cn-big5 cp950)
  20. w3m-euc-japan 
  21. undecided 

  Other coding systems cannot be distinguished automatically
  from these, and therefore cannot be recognized automatically
  with the present coding system priorities.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

And my sig is correct, I am running these setups.

And thinking about it, these are all settings relating to utf-8 in my
config file -

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
  (setq selection-coding-system 'utf-8)
  (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
  ;; Language Environment
  (set-language-environment 'utf-8)
##############
(setq org-export-coding-system 'utf-8)
(prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
(set-charset-priority 'unicode)
(setq default-process-coding-system '(utf-8-unix . utf-8-unix))
###################
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
(set-default-coding-systems 'utf-8)
(set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8)
;; backwards compatibility as default-buffer-file-coding-system
;; is deprecated in 23.2.
(if (boundp 'buffer-file-coding-system)
    (setq-default buffer-file-coding-system 'utf-8)
  (setq default-buffer-file-coding-system 'utf-8))

;; Treat clipboard input as UTF-8 string first; compound text next, etc.
(setq x-select-request-type '(UTF8_STRING COMPOUND_TEXT TEXT STRING))
#+END_SRC
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

I've separated the separate c ode blocks using #'s. Is it possible that
all of those could be causing my problem? And if so, what can I chop out
and yet still retain utf-8 working?

Thanks
Sharon.
-- 
A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk
TGmeds = http://www.tgmeds.org.uk
DrugFacts = https://www.drugfacts.org.uk  
Debian 9.0, fluxbox 1.3.5-2, emacs 25.1.1, org-mode 9.0.9

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Re: \201\236 appearing in emacs.desktop

[tomas]

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On Sat, Jul 08, 2017 at 01:23:22PM +0100, Sharon Kimble wrote:
> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
> 
> > On Sat, Jul 08, 2017 at 09:46:27AM +0100, Sharon Kimble wrote:
> >> 
> >> I've a problem that seems to have only developed this morning with my
> >> 'emacs.desktop' file [...]

[...]

> I think that this is the answer to what you're saying -
> 
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> Coding system for saving this buffer:
>   U -- utf-8-unix (alias: mule-utf-8-unix)
[...]
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Pretty unsurprising. Sorry I can't say where those \201\236 are
coming from. Emacs is able to transparently represent "byte values"
which would be an encoding error within an otherwise UTF-8 encoded
buffer (actually it uses an extension of UTF-8 for that). To display
that, it resorts to those octal escapes, \nnn.

But no idea how they got in in the first place.

What happens if you delete them? Do they reappear next time around?

> And my sig is correct, I am running these setups.

Civilised :-)

> And thinking about it, these are all settings relating to utf-8 in my
> config file -

[...]

> I've separated the separate c ode blocks using #'s. Is it possible that
> all of those could be causing my problem? And if so, what can I chop out
> and yet still retain utf-8 working?

They all look pretty harmless to me. Actually they should be mostly
unnecessary, since the defaults should work more or less like that
(but note that I may well have missed some detail!).

Baffled
- -- tomás
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Re: \201\236 appearing in emacs.desktop

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2017 17:20:50 +0200
> From: tomas@tuxteam.de
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> > --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> > Coding system for saving this buffer:
> >   U -- utf-8-unix (alias: mule-utf-8-unix)
> [...]
> > --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
> 
> Pretty unsurprising. Sorry I can't say where those \201\236 are
> coming from. Emacs is able to transparently represent "byte values"
> which would be an encoding error within an otherwise UTF-8 encoded
> buffer (actually it uses an extension of UTF-8 for that). To display
> that, it resorts to those octal escapes, \nnn.

\201 will not happen in UTF-8 encodings.  It most probably comes from
some encoding like Shift-JIS or whatever.

Perhaps the OP should show more of the corrupted file (use
find-file-literally to avoid corruption by decoding), it could give
more hints.

Re: \201\236 appearing in emacs.desktop

[Sharon Kimble]

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tomas@tuxteam.de writes:

> On Sat, Jul 08, 2017 at 01:23:22PM +0100, Sharon Kimble wrote:
>> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
>> 
>> > On Sat, Jul 08, 2017 at 09:46:27AM +0100, Sharon Kimble wrote:
>> >> 
>> >> I've a problem that seems to have only developed this morning with my
>> >> 'emacs.desktop' file [...]
>
> [...]
>
>> I think that this is the answer to what you're saying -
>> 
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>> Coding system for saving this buffer:
>>   U -- utf-8-unix (alias: mule-utf-8-unix)
> [...]
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
> Pretty unsurprising. Sorry I can't say where those \201\236 are
> coming from. Emacs is able to transparently represent "byte values"
> which would be an encoding error within an otherwise UTF-8 encoded
> buffer (actually it uses an extension of UTF-8 for that). To display
> that, it resorts to those octal escapes, \nnn.
>
> But no idea how they got in in the first place.
>
> What happens if you delete them? Do they reappear next time around?
Thanks Tomas.

Yes. The only way round it that I've found is once 'emacs.desktop' gets
corrupted like that is to delete it and then rebuild my previous opened
buffers from memory.

>
>> And my sig is correct, I am running these setups.
>
> Civilised :-)
>
>> And thinking about it, these are all settings relating to utf-8 in my
>> config file -
>
> [...]
>
>> I've separated the separate c ode blocks using #'s. Is it possible that
>> all of those could be causing my problem? And if so, what can I chop out
>> and yet still retain utf-8 working?
>
> They all look pretty harmless to me. Actually they should be mostly
> unnecessary, since the defaults should work more or less like that
> (but note that I may well have missed some detail!).
>

And now that I've been looking at all my old 'emacs.desktop' files, I
can't find any where its corrupted, so it seems to have corrected itself
this time. For a while at least.

Thanks
Sharon.
-- 
A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk
TGmeds = http://www.tgmeds.org.uk
DrugFacts = https://www.drugfacts.org.uk  
Debian 9.0, fluxbox 1.3.5-2, emacs 25.1.1, org-mode 9.0.9

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Re: \201\236 appearing in emacs.desktop

[tomas]

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On Sat, Jul 08, 2017 at 06:02:59PM +0100, Sharon Kimble wrote:

[...]

> And now that I've been looking at all my old 'emacs.desktop' files, I
> can't find any where its corrupted, so it seems to have corrected itself
> this time. For a while at least.

Perhaps you should look into the usual log files (/var/log/messages and
friends or however that is called in the Brave New World) for any hints
towards disk problems. Maybe, just maybe your disk is flaky :-/

Cheers
- -- tomás
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Re: \201\236 appearing in emacs.desktop

[Sharon Kimble]

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tomas@tuxteam.de writes:

> On Sat, Jul 08, 2017 at 06:02:59PM +0100, Sharon Kimble wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> And now that I've been looking at all my old 'emacs.desktop' files, I
>> can't find any where its corrupted, so it seems to have corrected itself
>> this time. For a while at least.
>
> Perhaps you should look into the usual log files (/var/log/messages and
> friends or however that is called in the Brave New World) for any hints
> towards disk problems. Maybe, just maybe your disk is flaky :-/

Thanks for replying Tomas.

I have 10 days worth of 'emacs.desktop' and I checked each one of them
and it still didn't show up in any of them. I backup my emacs config
file, my theme, and my emacs.desktop every evening, just in case! I keep
10 days-worth of these backups before they are deleted on a backup
cycle. It has saved my bacon, as the saying goes, on several occasions
so I think that its worth it. Plus I have my usual hourly backup with
rsync of my \home. So I actually checked 12 files without it appearing.

I would be very surprised if the hard-drive is going 'flaky' as this
computer is only about 5 weeks old, and its not due to 'lack of memory'
as I've got 64 gigs of ram, so that should cover most eventualities.

But it is something that I'm keeping an eye out for.

Thanks
Sharon.
-- 
A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk
TGmeds = http://www.tgmeds.org.uk
DrugFacts = https://www.drugfacts.org.uk  
Debian 9.0, fluxbox 1.3.5-2, emacs 25.1.1, org-mode 9.0.9

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Re: \201\236 appearing in emacs.desktop

[tomas]

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On Sun, Jul 09, 2017 at 05:49:05PM +0100, Sharon Kimble wrote:

[...]

> Thanks for replying Tomas.
> 
> I have 10 days worth of 'emacs.desktop' [...]

Very prudent, all that.

> I would be very surprised if the hard-drive is going 'flaky' as this
> computer is only about 5 weeks old,

I hope so. Still, unexplained file corruptions... (it wouldn't be a
a typical corruption for a flaky disk, though).

>                                     and its not due to 'lack of memory'
> as I've got 64 gigs of ram, so that should cover most eventualities.

Wow :)

Cheers
- -- tomás
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