From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: "no-conversion" coding system Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:34:13 +0900 Message-ID: <878ww3slju.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <484F1FAB.6070005@gmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1216102832 8077 80.91.229.12 (15 Jul 2008 06:20:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:20:32 +0000 (UTC) Cc: lekktu@gmail.com, handa@m17n.org, Stefan Monnier , rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Jul 15 08:21:19 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1KIduY-0006aL-4K for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:21:18 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:50646 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KIdtf-0005kU-Lu for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:20:23 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KIdta-0005kO-1r for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:20:18 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KIdtX-0005je-I1 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:20:16 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=36642 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KIdtX-0005jb-Dx for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:20:15 -0400 Original-Received: from mtps01.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.223]:54299) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1KIdtL-0008I5-9h; Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:20:03 -0400 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mtps01.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id F40211535BC; Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:20:00 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 419F91A25C3; Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:34:14 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: VM ?bug? under XEmacs 21.5.21 (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:100717 Archived-At: Eli Zaretskii writes: > > From: Stefan Monnier > > Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:12:41 -0400 > > Cc: lekktu@gmail.com, rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org > > > > Technically, that may be true. But take a utf-8 text and open it with > > "no-conversion" and it won't look like the same text, so for some > > interpretation of "conversion", it has been converted. Irrelevant. You can achieve the same kind of confusion with `emacs -font'. :-) > no-conversion doesn't mean that the text will _look_ the same, it > means the byte stream will be the same. That's true as a definition, and incorrect as a matter of fact in multibyte buffers. Unless Emacs enforces "no-conversion is unibyte", "no-conversion" should die, and split its estate between "raw-text" (where newline conventions are meaningful) and "binary" (or "raw-bytes") for non-text files. > > Its other name "binary" is a lot more unequivocal. > > Only if you are a programmer who knows that binary files are usually > read with no conversions. Otherwise, the name "binary" doesn't have > any useful mnemonic meaning in the context of transforming one text > encoding into another. Binary isn't a text encoding, and therefore it's entirely appropriate that it lack a mnemonic meaning in the context of text encoding. In any case, only Emacs maintainers should ever need to care about the representational transformations performed by coding systems, and they all do know what binary means. Everybody else just needs to know the magic spell that turns mojibake into language; even if they did know about representations, they can't do anything about it. (I guess that's not strictly so in Emacs, but it should be. ;-)