Re: desktop-read usage and syntax ::error, strange character :: half-SOLVED!!!

[ken <gebser@mousecar.com>]

On 07/19/2017 02:46 AM, Yuri Khan wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 4:10 AM, ken <gebser@mousecar.com> wrote:
>
>> Most of the info in .emacs.desktop is inscrutable... I don't know what the
>> bejesus it is.  I even saw a bunch of lines like this:
>>
>>> (desktop-create-buffer <81><CE>
>> (81x = 129d ; CEx = 206d !!!)
>>
>> and didn't think it terribly odd.  But then I compared that file to one of
>> the backups I have of previous versions of the same file and, instead of the
>> "<81><CE>", there was "206"... in every case.
> The docstring for ‘desktop-create-buffer’ calls its first argument
> FILE-VERSION. It is reasonable to expect that it’s an integer such as
> 206.
>
> However, integers are also used as character codes, and 206 is the
> character code of Î (U+00CE Latin capital letter I with circumflex).
> In the UTF-8 encoding, this character is represented by two bytes 0x81
> 0xCE.

Agreed.  That's what I was suggesting above when showing the hex and 
decimal equivalences.

> It is as if under some circumstances the code that saves the desktop
> file writes the version as a character code instead of a decimal
> integer.

Agreed again... well, I'd use different terminology, but I know what you 
mean.  I've noticed too that emacs has had some problems regarding the 
representation of characters in text.  I've been having a longterm issue 
with the German characters: ä ö ü, their capitalized equivalents and ß.  
I can type them into an emacs buffer (and obviously into an email 
composed in Tbird).  But if I copy text with any of these characters 
from somewhere else and paste it into emacs, I get "garbage" characters 
in their stead; not so if I paste the same text into any other 
application on my system, e.g., Tbird, vi, bash shell, even 
LibreOffice's Calc.  So there's something shakey going on with emacs 
there.  I can't say this problem and the one original to this email 
thread come out of the same code, but they do bear some resemblance.