Re: user sees \xxx but is thwarted from searching for them

[Dan Jacobson <jidanni@deadspam.com>]

>>>>> "K" == Kai Großjohann <Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE> writes:

K> Then it is clear that Dan wants to search for buffer parts that
K> aren't in (representable) in the foo coding.  Right?

K> Dan?

[sniff] they referred to me by name.  it's almost like I exist
[sniff].  Sorry, I've been chasing the wild pig hunters of my land.

OK, my file would be a well behaved big5 chinese file except for a few
scattered characters that the author was using to represent some IPA
symbols.  My mission: no hunt them down and deal with them so that the
file can the be used with emacs.

what I probably should do is find a perl script that will replace any
characters outside the intended coding system of the file [which I
could tell it explicitly], "with ***\343\433 was here***" [ASCII]
which I could then deal with later in emacs.

Hmmm, this seems hard in perl, given big5's definition of
/[\x80-\xFE][\x40-\x7E\xA1-\xFE]/   also one should ignore any
[0x00-0x7F].

Indeed, how do the \xxx's get on my screen in the first place? well
C-x C-f is just going to make the whole file \xxx, so I do M-! cat
file, at least there I can see most of the chinese, and the \xxx's
stick out like a sore thumb.  but, what a drag it is that one can see
the \xxx's but cant search for them.  it almost makes one want to wrap
this emacs inside another emacs to be able to search for them [but a
screen at a time].

Anyway, I would just be searching in *Shell Command Output*, and still
have to navigate the now 100% \xxx source file.  So, my perl script
idea seems better.

By the way, apparently gnus asked me if I wanted to save Kai's name to
BBDB and I hit "y" or something.  Well, as Kai has that big B in his
name [=ss I think], and as I already had some big5 in my BBDB, well,
when it came time to save I was given the Spanish inquisition about
coding sets or something ... who knows, one false step here and your
file will become Coptic Egyptian or something.  So I want back and
switched the B for ss before saving.

By they way, does emacs require on to see octal codes on their screen
or can it live in a hex world yet?
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