bug#28705: 25.3; [PATCH] Change prefered coding system for Japanese language environment

[Paul Eggert]

Thanks for the bug report. Would you please discuss the practical 
advantages of the proposed patch?

Is the patch is for Japanese users who do not specify a locale via 
environment variables like LC_ALL? If so, how do they specify their 
preference to Emacs now, and how would this change affect behavior for 
them? And how do users specify their coding preference to other 
programs, such as "cat" and "diff"?

I have the impression that Emacs users in Japan are gradually switching 
from EUC-JP to UTF-8. Is there some way to verify this? I know of 
website surveys like 
<https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/character_encoding/ms/y>, 
which says that since 2010 UTF-8 has grown from 51% to 90% of websites 
whereas EUC-JP has shrunk from 0.7% to 0.3% worldwide. However, this 
issue is more about what encodings are used by keyboards and terminal 
displays in Japan (typically these are programs in windowing systems 
these days, as GNU/Linux consoles cannot handle enough characters to 
support Japanese). Is there some way to estimate this?

A minor point: a change like this should be noted in the NEWS file, and 
the commit message should use the usual Emacs style. I'm attaching a 
copy of your patch with a revised commit message, along with another 
patch to mention this change in NEWS and to change affected 
documentation. I will ask for comment about this proposed change on the 
emacs-devel mailing list.

0001-Change-preferred-Japanese-coding-system-to-UTF-8.patch
Description: Text Data

0002-Mention-Japanese-change-in-documentation.patch
Description: Text Data