Accented characters do not display correctly when running GNU Emacs inside a Windows Command Prompt

Accented characters do not display correctly when running GNU Emacs inside a Windows Command Prompt

[George Politis]

Hello,

If I run GNU Emacs in console mode (with the -nw switch) in PowerShell or a Command Prompt, then accented characters appear as escape sequences in the editor. For example, if I type the letter ``é``, I get ``\202``, for ``à`` I get ``\205``, etc. In windowed mode (without the -nw switch), it works OK!

I am not even remotely familiar with the Emacs source code, but I suspect that this might be a problem with the way it reads characters from the Windows terminal. Then again it might be an obscure configuration error on my part.

I've tried all possible combinations of the following lines in my init file:

(prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
(setq coding-system-for-read 'utf-8)
(setq coding-system-for-write 'utf-8)

I'm using the Win32 build of GNU Emacs 24.2.1. 

Can somebody please help me or confirm that this is a bug?

Thanks,
George

Re: Accented characters do not display correctly when running GNU Emacs inside a Windows Command Prompt

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2012 11:39:14 -0800 (PST)
> From: George Politis <gp@superpointer.com>
> 
> If I run GNU Emacs in console mode (with the -nw switch) in PowerShell or a Command Prompt, then accented characters appear as escape sequences in the editor. For example, if I type the letter ``é``, I get ``\202``, for ``à`` I get ``\205``, etc. In windowed mode (without the -nw switch), it works OK!
> 
> I am not even remotely familiar with the Emacs source code, but I suspect that this might be a problem with the way it reads characters from the Windows terminal. Then again it might be an obscure configuration error on my part.
> 
> I've tried all possible combinations of the following lines in my init file:
> 
> (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
> (setq coding-system-for-read 'utf-8)
> (setq coding-system-for-write 'utf-8)
> 
> I'm using the Win32 build of GNU Emacs 24.2.1. 
> 
> Can somebody please help me or confirm that this is a bug?

This is a known bug that is already solved for the upcoming release
24.3 of Emacs.  See http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=12082.
If you can try the latest pretest from alpha.gnu.org, you should see
this problem gone (I hope).

Re: Accented characters do not display correctly when running GNU Emacs inside a Windows Command Prompt

[George Politis]

On Monday, 31 December 2012 20:51:17 UTC+1, Eli Zaretskii  wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2012 11:39:14 -0800 (PST)
> 
> > From: George Politis
> > 
> > If I run GNU Emacs in console mode (with the -nw switch) in
> > PowerShell or a Command Prompt, then accented characters appear as
> > escape sequences in the editor. For example, if I type the letter
> > ``é``, I get ``\202``, for ``à`` I get ``\205``, etc. In windowed
> > mode (without the -nw switch), it works OK!
> > 
> >
> > I am not even remotely familiar with the Emacs source code, but I
> > suspect that this might be a problem with the way it reads
> > characters from the Windows terminal. Then again it might be an
> > obscure configuration error on my part.
> >
> > I've tried all possible combinations of the following lines in my
> > init file:
> >
> > (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
> > (setq coding-system-for-read 'utf-8)
> > (setq coding-system-for-write 'utf-8)
> >
> > I'm using the Win32 build of GNU Emacs 24.2.1. 
> > 
> > Can somebody please help me or confirm that this is a bug?
> 
>
> This is a known bug that is already solved for the upcoming release
> 
> 24.3 of Emacs.  See
> http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=12082.
> 
> If you can try the latest pretest from alpha.gnu.org, you should see 
> this problem gone (I hope).

This was indeed the problem. I just installed the latest pretest and it
works great now. Many thanks!