Re: replacing characters and whacky trans-buffer conversion

[ken <gebser@speakeasy.net>]

Okay, try this:

Create two buffers in one emacs frame.

In one of them enter C-q 5442 RETURN.  You should get a Greek character
which looks much like a German double-s.

Using only emacs, put this character into the kill buffer and yank it
into the second buffer.

When I do this, I get a different character in the second buffer.  Its
coding (ascertained via C-x=) is also different.

Go back to the first buffer and do another yank.  What character do you
get.  I get the original character, the one inserted with C-q 5442 RETURN.



On 03/06/2007 10:15 AM somebody named ken wrote:
> An email comes in with this (emdash) character in it: –
> 
> It looks like an em-dash until the text containing it is pasted into an
> emacs buffer; then it appears as a series of "garbage characters".
> (Copy and paste the emdash into an emacs buffer yourself, and perhaps
> you'll see what I mean.)
> 
> To me and, possibly to you, this emdash appears in emacs as nine (9)
> "garbage" characters.
> 
> Because I want to programmatically replace these 9 garbage characters
> into something latin1-friendly, I copy-and-paste these nine characters
> into an *.el file containing a line like this:
> 
>   (replace-string "–" "--" nil (point-min) (point-max))
> 
> The sought string (i.e., the first argument above) isn't found, however
> because, for some whacky reason, the emdash pasted into the *.el file is
> different-- by one character-- from exactly the same emdash pasted into
> the other emacs buffer (the one I'm saving the email in).
> 
> In the emacs buffer containing the email, the fourth garbage character
> (as shown by C-u C-x=) is:
> 
>   character: β (05542, 2914, 0xb62)
>     charset: greek-iso8859-7
> 	     (Right-Hand Part of Latin/Greek Alphabet (ISO/IEC 8859-7): ISO-IR-126)
>  code point: 98
>      syntax: word
>    category: g:Greek
> buffer code: 0x86 0xE2
>   file code: not encodable by coding system undecided-unix
>        font: -ETL-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--16-160-72-72-C-80-ISO8859-7
> 
> In the *.el buffer, the fourth garbage character (which should be
> exactly the same character) is:
> 
>   character: â (0342, 226, 0xe2)
>     charset: eight-bit-graphic (8-bit graphic char (0xA0..0xFF))
>  code point: 226
>      syntax: whitespace
>    category:
> buffer code: 0xE2
>   file code: 0xE2 (encoded by coding system raw-text-unix)
>        font: -ETL-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--16-160-72-72-C-80-ISO8859-1
> 
> I tried entering "C-q 5542 RETURN" into the *.el file, but emacs
> immediately makes it into the second (â, or 0342) character.  Doing the
> same into the other emacs buffer (containing my copy of the email)
> *does* enter the good (β, or 05542) character.
> 
> All I really want is for the above replace-string function to work as
> expected.  But emacs consistently converts that fourth character in the
> emdash string into a different character, subsequently causing the
> search to fail.  So how do I get the correct "garbage" characters into
> the first argument of the replace-string function-- i.e., into the *.el
> file?
> 
> 
> tnx,
> ken
> 
> 


-- 
"Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its
possessors into trouble of all kinds."
	-- Samuel Butler