Re: Strange behaviour with dired and UTF8

[Jan D.]

> > This sounds very complicated.  As I understand it, dired first gets
> > the file name from ls (original representation), then converts that to
> > whatever encoding it shall use to show it in the buffer (view
> > representation).  When dired operates on the file (opening for 
> > example),
> > it converts back from the view representation, hoping to get the
> > original representation.  But this may fail, since conversion
> > from view back to original is not one-to-one.
>
> It is sure that there's a possibility that encoding a
> filename can't get the original filename.  But, Emacs anyway
> can't handle such a filename.

Why not if it has the original filename?

> > This work (original representation -> view representation -> original
> > representation) should not be needed, IMHO.  Why just not keep the
> > original representation around (some kind of text property on the file
> > name?) and always use that when operating on the file?  That change
> > would be transparent to users.
>
> A user may type C-x C-f FILENAME in the dired buffer.  With
> the above method, we don't know how to encode FILENAME.

Why would this change?  I am only talking about file names that dired
reads from a directory.  No need to change C-x C-f.

> And, even if one types `f' to visit a file, in that file
> buffer, we loose the information of the original
> representation.

Then Emacs as a whole should change.  If I open a file from dired,
modify it and save it, I expect it to save to the same file name.
Are you saying there are situations where Emacs fails to do this?
That sounds like a major bug to me.  Maybe the buffer itself also
needs to keep the original file name around.

        Jan D.