Re: How to get rid of Microsoft dumb quotes, e.g. \222 for apostrophe?

[ken <gebser@speakeasy.net>]

On 02/20/2007 05:56 AM somebody named Juanma Barranquero wrote:
> On 2/20/07, ken <gebser@speakeasy.net> wrote:
> 
>> When I copy-n-paste "—" into an emacs buffer, one of the (several) bytes
>> displayed is represented by '\224'.
> 
> In a unibyte buffer, you mean? Does it appear correctly if you do
> 
>  M-: (set-buffer-multibyte t) <RET>
> 
> ?
> 
>> Have you tried to copy-n-paste "—" into an emacs buffer?
>> What do you get?
> 
> I get an em dash (U+2014). I'm starting Emacs in multibyte mode (the
> default).
> 
>             Juanma

The OP (original poster) on this thread was having to deal with MS
characters appearing in a buffer with latin1 encoding.  I was having the
same issue.  So the solution I was offering was intended for others (and
myself) who wish to retain their files in latin1 encoding.

To be sure, it's possible to save a buffer to file in another encoding.
 Indeed, I'm often prompting for this when saving a buffer to file.
Since I prefer to retain files in a format which will be readable by the
most people possible, I prefer to use latin1 encoding when- and wherever
feasible.  More importantly, the original questioner was asking for a
way to convert MS characters for use in latin1.