Re: How switch from escaped octal character code to escaped HEX?

[Deniz Dogan <deniz.a.m.dogan@gmail.com>]

2011/1/3 Deniz Dogan <deniz.a.m.dogan@gmail.com>:
> 2011/1/3 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>:
>>>> When Emacs find that byte that does
>>>> not correspond to any specific displayable character it display
>>>> octal codes instead, like: \276 (and with different color).
>>>>
>>>> This is useful, but I prefer HEX base instead octal.
>>
>> There is no direct/easy way to do it.
>> But you can do it by adding the corresponding 128 entries to the
>> standard-display-table.
>>
>> E.g.
>>
>>   (setq standard-display-table (make-display-table))
>>   (aset standard-display-table (unibyte-char-to-multibyte 131)
>>                                [?\\ ?x ?8 ?3])
>>   (aset standard-display-table (unibyte-char-to-multibyte 132)
>>                                [?\\ ?x ?8 ?4])
>>
>> Should make the bytes 131 and 132 be displayed as \x83 and \x84 rather
>> than \203 and \204.
>>
>>
>
> What is the reasoning behind displaying it in octal rather than
> decimal or hexadecimal in the first place? I didn't know people cared
> about octals anymore.
>

I read on Wikipedia: "Octal representation of non-ASCII bytes may be
particularly handy with UTF-8, where any start byte has octal value
\3nn and any continuation byte has octal value \2nn."

Is this the reason perhaps?

-- 
Deniz Dogan