Re: Multiple encodings in one file

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: "Lambert, Joshua D" <JLambert@MissouriState.edu>
> Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2024 18:45:52 +0000
> msip_labels:
> 
> Thank you for the time. What you said gives me some hope but I have a follow-up question. If I visit a file
> literally, make a change, and save it, the file seems to be different only where I changed it. Is that true?

If you save it while binding coding-system-to-write to no-conversion,
yes.  IOW, you need to disable encoding while saving.

> If so, then does the following seem reasonable.
> 
> 1 Find a file literally.
> 2 The user will accept that some characters will show octal codes or something similar.
> 3 Edit the records where understandable and possible. 
> 4 Save file.

That can be done, of course, but note that UTF-8 encoded text is not
legible, unless the characters are all ASCII.

> Furthermore, if I want to try to convert the MARC8 encoded records to UTF8 (mappings are available), is it
> reasonable/possible for me to do that in the buffer after using find-file-literally or would it be better to do that
> using hexl-mode, or another method?

You can convert MARC-8 to Unicode (not UTF-8, since Emacs uses
internal representation that is not exactly UTF-8), yes.  But then you
will have to convert back to MARC-8 when you save the file, at least
in the parts that the user didn't edit.