From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Nikolaj Schumacher Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Using utf-8 and only utf-8 Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:17:46 +0200 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1221496357 6820 80.91.229.12 (15 Sep 2008 16:32:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:32:37 +0000 (UTC) Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org To: dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Sep 15 18:33:34 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1KfH0s-00089W-9K for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:33:22 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:57907 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KfGzr-0007EF-FH for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:32:19 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KfGlu-0007ES-NH for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:17:54 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KfGlu-0007EE-Af for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:17:54 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=47457 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KfGlt-0007EB-V8 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:17:54 -0400 Original-Received: from dd18200.kasserver.com ([85.13.138.168]:38188) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1KfGlt-0000iJ-Ee for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:17:53 -0400 Original-Received: from thursday (BAH73f6.bah.pppool.de [77.135.115.246]) by dd18200.kasserver.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2C2991801D3EB; Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:17:55 +0200 (CEST) In-Reply-To: (David Combs's message of "Sun\, 14 Sep 2008 21\:12\:55 +0000 \(UTC\)") User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.2.50 (darwin) X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 2) X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:57634 Archived-At: dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) wrote: > I get this same question, "what coding system?", sometimes, like > sometimes when grabbing some text from a wikipedia entry. > > Not knowing anything about these coding systems, their history, > etc, I haven't a clue as to what to answer! > > For someone like me often grabbing ascii[-like?] files from eg > wikipedia, would a choice of utf-8 be reasonable? What do you mean by grabbing? Copy & paste or downloading? > Again, it's for what seems and looks to me (on screen) like plain old > ascii. If it really only contains ASCII characters, it doesn't matter if you call it ASCII, UTF-8 or something like Latin-1. They only differ in the way "other" characters are encoded. UTF-8 can encode pretty much every character known to man, and is becoming more and more popular. It is a very reasonable choice for storing data. When it comes to receiving data, you'll have to rely on the sender to specify the coding system. Wikipedia uses UTF-8, as you can see in the HTML header. > And what would you have me stick into my .emacs, then? Do you use unix? Then you only need to specify the correct locale (e.g. en_US.UTF-8) and Emacs should pick it up. regards, Nikolaj Schumacher