Re: Don't set coding-system in shell-mode
"Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull(a)sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> writes:
>>>>> "Ben" == Ben Wing <ben(a)666.com>
writes:
Ben> Moved to xemacs-beta. I disagree. We always want to be
Ben> automatic when possible -- i.e. option 1. We don't want to
Ben> burden the user with extra work -- i.e. #3.
Being automatic is possible only when the user knows what he is
doing. We need to be very careful that users do not get wedged into
coding systems they don't know how to get out of. This is one of
Hrvoje's prime complaints about Mule; it can and does destroy data
because of coding-system wedging.
Ben's idea is to autodetect every output/input so you won't
end up in strange coding-system. I don't think your last
statement is true since you can always repeat the command
before in shell-mode. What we need is automatic detection
and explicit specification of what coding-system to use.
Remember, you can't do the equivalent of `C-x C-k RET C-u C-x
C-f
"file" RET "the-right-encoding" RET' on a terminal stream yet.
Now we are discussing how to do that sensibly, aren't we? :-)
I think we should do something like buffer the first screenful, do
autodetect on it, and `C-x C-m c' should (optionally?) offer a menu
including coding systems and a line of sample text from the buffer to
show the user what they are getting.
This will fail if user accidentally output some amount of
binary data. And we need raw data to autodetect
coding-system. Text in the buffer is already code converted
in most cases. What happens if iso-2022-jp, shift_jis and
euc-jp is outputted in the same buffer?
I think Ben's idea and my idea can coexist. This is a
revised proposal.
1. Try to autodetect every input/output by resetting
coding-system.
2. If user specify explicitly what coding-system to use with
C-x RET c, then use that. i.e. reset to that
coding-system instead of auto-detection after every
command.
3. Implement a way to specify coding-system used for only
next command. This will be already existing command
set-buffer-process-coding-system since it will be
reseted after one command execution.
4. (Optional) Implement a way to change coding-system
permanently.
--
Yoshiki Hayashi