what coding system to select when I insert a unicode character

what coding system to select when I insert a unicode character

[Angus Comber]

I sometimes need to insert mathematical symbols into my emacs text files
and when I do I get prompted for a coding system.  And the default is
japanese-shift-jis which seems strange when less than half the population
of the world is Japanese.  I am in the UK, what coding system should I use?

I am inserting unicode characters.  eg c-x 8, then enter a unicode number.
eg 2203 for the existential quantification symbol.

Re: what coding system to select when I insert a unicode character

[tomas]

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On Wed, Dec 26, 2018 at 10:38:37AM +0000, Angus Comber wrote:
> I sometimes need to insert mathematical symbols into my emacs text files
> and when I do I get prompted for a coding system.  And the default is
> japanese-shift-jis which seems strange when less than half the population
> of the world is Japanese.  I am in the UK, what coding system should I use?

Almost always utf-8. Select utf-8-unix, utf-8-dos or utf-8-mac depending
on your preferred platform (they differ in the line endings).

Cheers
-- tomás

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Re: what coding system to select when I insert a unicode character

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2018 11:47:54 +0100
> From: <tomas@tuxteam.de>
> 
> Select utf-8-unix, utf-8-dos or utf-8-mac depending on your
> preferred platform (they differ in the line endings).

Emacs knows the preferred EOL format of the platform, and will
automatically select it if the user chooses just 'utf-8', with no
explicit EOL conversion.

Re: what coding system to select when I insert a unicode character

[tomas]

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On Wed, Dec 26, 2018 at 05:44:24PM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2018 11:47:54 +0100
> > From: <tomas@tuxteam.de>
> > 
> > Select utf-8-unix, utf-8-dos or utf-8-mac depending on your
> > preferred platform (they differ in the line endings).
> 
> Emacs knows the preferred EOL format of the platform, and will
> automatically select it if the user chooses just 'utf-8', with no
> explicit EOL conversion.

My experience is that Emacs "does the right thing" always, since
quite a while now, yes.

Cheers
-- tomás

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Re: what coding system to select when I insert a unicode character

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Angus Comber <anguscomber@gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2018 10:38:37 +0000
> 
> I sometimes need to insert mathematical symbols into my emacs text files
> and when I do I get prompted for a coding system.  And the default is
> japanese-shift-jis which seems strange when less than half the population
> of the world is Japanese.

This is fixed in Emacs 27, it suggests UTF-8 in most such cases.