Re: How do I read and write an iso-8859-1 file in Emacs 23?

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:43:51 +0000
> From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
> 
> the subject just about says everything.

It is strange to read such questions in the year 2010 regarding Emacs
23.

> Emacs 23 insists on fouling up my text, converting (for example) ü
> ("u umlaut") into \374 each time I try to save it.  It then
> complains it can't save \374 because it can't "convert" it.

What does Emacs tell about this character when you type "C-u C-x ="
with point on the ü (before it is converted to \374)?  Also, how did
you insert that character into the buffer?

I suspect that something causes Emacs to treat it as a raw byte \374,
rather than a Latin-1 character.  (Yes, Emacs can distinguish between
these two.)

> In desperation, I tried putting this on the first line of the text:
> 
>     -*- mode : Text ; buffer-file-coding-system : iso-8859-1-unix -*-
> 
> .  Should this help?

Yes.  But it shouldn't be needed in most situations.

> Is it causing me problems?

It shouldn't.

> What am I missing here?  All I want to do is read an 8859-1 text file,
> edit it, and write it back again.  How do I tell Emacs that an 0xFC
> character in the file is actually a "u umlaut", and not anything else.

If you have this trouble in a file you visited and did not modify yet,
it could be that the file includes some raw bytes that don't fit any
encoding known to Emacs, or perhaps Emacs detected the encoding
incorrectly.  What does `buffer-file-coding-system' evaluate to in
this buffer, immediately after you visit the file?

> Why is Emacs insisting on trying to be so clever?

Because it's Emacs ;-)