Re: I do not want to select a coding system

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

Bruce Korb <bruce.korb@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Every now and then, it becomes completely impossible to save the
> contents of a new file I am creating.  Emacs demands I select a
> coding system and none of them are plain old vanilla ASCII text..
> It seems really nice and clever and egalitarian to allow for so many
> coding systems.  It is really wonderful.  But compilers want ASCII and
> I cannot get plain ascii.  In the end, I go into a shell and type:
>
> cat > myfile.c <<\_EOF_
> <<paste-a-gazillion-lines>>
> _EOF_
>
> and revisit "myfile.c".  Works like a charm, but is an incredible hassle.
>
> I only want ASCII.  I've waded through the bazillion lines of configurable
> stuff, too, and there is no obvious to me selection to say, "I always,
> always, always edit ASCII text".  What is the magic?  Thanks.
>

What platform?
What version of emacs?
What is your locale setting?
What does emacs say is the current language environment when it starts
up?

Generally, if things are not working correctly, either your locale is
not set correctly or you have stuff in your .emacs that is confusing
emacs. Note also that UTF-8 is rapidly becoming the default and many
compilers can handle that fine. Are you working with a version control
system? Issues can arise if the version control systm isn't configured
correctly and you are working with others who are on different platforms
etc. 

I do a lot of coding and have to deal with gcc/g++ and a number of
scripting languages etc. On the whole, I don't run into any issues these
days and my environment is pretty much UTF-8 across the borad. I'm
running on a Debian system with emacs 23.

Note also that the handling of character encoding in emacs 23 has been
improved a lot. Worth considering upgrading if your not htere yet.

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au