Re: gnu/emacs 2.4 in and out of X

[Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa@Web.DE>]

Am 30.08.2006 um 07:11 schrieb dsoliver@earthlink.net:

> I tried all of these things and it still doesn't work.

I don't believe this! If your copy of GNU Emacs works right it should  
change the left-most part of the mode-line. Since I work in an UTF-8  
based environment I see instead of -uuu: now -uu3: as indicator that  
ISO 8859-3 is used. If you do not see that change you either should  
change your operating system and get one that does not distribute  
crippled Emacsen or compile GNU Emacs yourself from sources.

> Once again the problem is that I can work fine in Esperanto while  
> in console mode not in X.

Yesterday you wrote you were using an Emacs from a no-X package. I  
wonder how you make this an X client! Or is the package's description  
or is your description incorrect? Please check exactly which binary  
named 'emacs' or such you are using in which case and how you make a  
difference between these cases and tell us which libraries these  
binaries are using! (This can also be done by selecting "Send Bug  
Report" from the Help menu or type M-x report-emacs-bug RET.)

> I now can do the same in X. I added the iso-8859-3 font to  
> my .Xresources file. However, my main problem still remains.

Which resources are these?

I don't think that these can help, except you give Emacs a fontset  
with a working declaration of a font for ISO 8859-3 that exists on  
your system and is found by X11. But this would only enable Emacs to  
*display* (or represent) the (right) characters with the right glyphs.

One problem still can be that you saved the Esperanto files in UTF-8.  
So open them (in UTF-8) and then save them in ISO 8859-3. The menu  
Options -> Mule -> Set Coding Systems allows you to load and to save  
in whatever encoding you choose (well, not always, often GNU Emacs  
would explain that this or that character cannot be saved in this or  
that encoding; and in this case you should be careful enough to check  
whether and why Emacs tells the truth).

There are recode or iconv to convert a copy of your file also ...

 From what you see on screen you cannot judge what the contents of  
the underlying file is. One character on screen can be saved in an  
UTF-8 encoded file contents with up to three bytes (octets) (though  
in ISO 8859-3 they are one or two octets). Therefore you need to make  
sure that what you claim is really correct.

> When I leave X and return to the console,

What does that mean? How can you leave X? Without X11 you have  
(almost) nothing to work with.

> emacs no longer can read any of my files with iso-8858-3 characters.

That is not true. Or you made your file write-only. For example owned  
by root and you have no permissions to to open it for reading. I can  
read in GNU Emacs every file I am allowed to open for reading –  
although the contents sometimes looks really strange!

Please correct what you mean with 'cannot read!'

> The mode line looks the same as before I started X, but emacs no  
> longer understands those modes.

This is *that* unusual that I presume you are using two different  
binaries ... of which one *might* be GNU Emacs.

> I go through the actions of setting up things again. It doesn't
> work. I then start X again and things work again. I stop X, things
> don't work.

What is this nonsense of starting and stopping X11?! If you want to  
work with GNU Emacs outside of X11, i.e. not as an X client, you open  
some terminal emulation and launch Emacs with -nw. And of course you  
can have more than one GNU Emacs X client and more than one GNU Emacs  
without own windows running inside terminal emulations and all the  
show the same file, best in read-only, at the same time.

> I've looked at various logs, but I can't find what is going on.

So make sure the basics are right: what is your file's actual  
encoding, what so-called Emacsen are you using, what is the mode-line  
of the Esperanto buffer starting with, what happens with this  
starting sequence when you save in ISO 8859-3 encoding?


In my experience it helps to physically go away from a problem. An  
hour, on a day. Or more. The relief and the brain's better supply  
with more oxygen carrying blood while moving without aid of a car or  
an escalator helps to see the problem from a different view. And in  
this relaxed situation ideas can come up, that bring insights and  
solutions.


I can send you a really ISO 8859-3 encoded file. It starts like this:

	;;; -*- mode: Text; coding: iso-8859-3; -*-
	;
	;       Time-stamp: <2005-07-15 14:20:24 pete>
	;
	;   Southern European, Maltese and Esperanto Glyphs (Latin 3)
	;
	;   oct   dec   hex    UCS2    UTF-8
	;=====================================
	  = 240 = 160 = A0 = U+00A0 =    C2 A0 : NO-BREAK SPACE
	Ħ = 241 = 161 = A1 = U+0126 =    C4 A6 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER H WITH  
STROKE
	˘ = 242 = 162 = A2 = U+02D8 =    CB 98 : BREVE
	£ = 243 = 163 = A3 = U+00A3 =    C2 A3 : POUND SIGN


--
Greetings

   Pete

Without vi there is only GNU Emacs