coding-system perfectionism locks user out

[Dan Jacobson]

I do
$ lynx -dump http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Pagoda/3847/sapienti/hagfa99b.htm > 
hagfa99b.txt 
$ emacs -q hagfa99b.txt
I go into options>mule and the choice to set coding system is blanked
out... what's worse, its keystroke isn't even mentioned in the menu.

Anyway, at this point the user would just see his data garbled, with
no pointers on what to do next.

[I then did M-! cat hagfa99b.txt and can then at least see what I'm
supposed to see [big5 chinese], but then don't expect that I can save
and then see the file again correctly.]

This brings up the point: if the file is 99% big5, then why not allow
me to still handle it as 100% big5 if I want... perhaps with some
warnings upon opening it each time...  OK, this may not be 'safe', but
what if one wishes to maintain a file among friends, and you are the
only one with an editor that wont allow yourself to see the file
correctly, even though the other fellows have no problem?

Why can't emacs be told "I live in big5 land.  Sometimes I have a
giant file with one or two chars in it that cause emacs to doubt that
it is a big5 file.  For this i am sorry, however, yes, i would like to
know about it and even would like to know where the items occur and
what they look like, however, as I might not be even in charge of that
file, or am in no hurry to fix it, i would still like to be able to
view/edit other parts of that file... but I can't easily because you
think you are smarter than me and wont show it to me in big5 mode, no
matter what buttons i press".
-- 
http://www.geocities.com/jidanni/ Taiwan(04)25854780