Re: locales and coding systems
> On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 04:31:17PM -0500, Haines Brown wrote:
> > The default coding system in emacs is determined by how I've set up
> > locales in debian. I went back to my installation notes, and according
> > to them, I had set the locale to utf-8.
>
> I don't know exactly how emacs decides what coding system to use for
> new files. But this might be useful. This is from the emacs manual, in
> the section on international character set support, in the subsection
> about specifying coding:
>
> "The variable `default-buffer-file-coding-system' specifies
> the choice of coding system to use when you create a new file.
> It applies when you find a new file, and when you create a buffer
> and then save it in a file. Selecting a language environment
> typically sets this variable to a good choice of default coding
> system for that language environment."
The operative word here may be "typically." Despite some debate on this
issue, it seems my emacs 21.2.1 is supposed to support mule-ucs quite well.
> So I think you can either solve this by setting that variable or by
> changing your language environment.
Something was indeed broken in setting my language environment, but it
is now apparently fixed. That is, after several configuration
attempts, $ locales now finally does return LANG=en_US.UTF-8. I
finally have that coding system listed in /etc/locales.gen.
However, emacs still does not see it. Do you know of any little test
that might use the default coding system? For example, I could view a
text having accented chars in nedit, but it seems nedit does not
support them. Galeon does not disply utf-8 chars either.
Setting the variable may be a useful work-around, but I'd rather find
out what is the cause of the problem. I do intend to return the emacs
forum to pursue it from that side, however.
Bijan, thanks for the suggestions.
Haines Brown
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