Re: windows-1251 language environment

[Dave Love]

Kenichi Handa <address@hidden> writes:

> At first, I have installed a mechanism of auto-loading a
> coding system.

Is it really worth it for the 8-bit sets?  I'm not sure whether to
think this is significant or not:

let ((stats (garbage-collect)))
  (load "code-pages")
  (pp (list stats (garbage-collect))))
 => (((50679 . 9813)
      (10196 . 1)
      (587 . 129)
      127582 175645
      (55 . 76)
      (48 . 22)
      (8025 . 1488))
     ((54148 . 6344)
      (10538 . 39)
      (588 . 128)
      134356 312873
      (55 . 76)
      (48 . 22)
      (8443 . 1070)))

> I have not yet tested it fully.  We may have to add GCPROs
> in several places.

<URL:ftp://dlpx1.dl.ac.uk/fx/emacs/Mule/autoload-coding-systems.diff>
was reasonably well tested, probably also on a system where gcpro was
relevant then (though I don't know if I tested it by forcing GC during
loading).

> Right.  I think what we need for language environment is a
> mechanism similar to face; i.e. creating a new one easily
> while allowing inheriting, and customizing an existing one
> easily.

I did something about customizing the language alist some time ago.
As far as I remember, it naturally used the mechanism for overriding
elements of the standard value in customized lists, and that interface
was vetoed for reasons I didn't understand.  Presumably inheritance
would use a similar mechanism, but I'm not sure how useful it is.

As it is, a language environment has to cover several things that
should be orthogonal:

 * The language (which might influence input methods as well as the
   default Ispell dictionary, at least);

 * The charset/coding system preferences (which might also influence
   input methods, though the hooks now in Quail make that less of an
   issue);

 * Other things that currently aren't dealt with properly, like paper
   size (for ps-print), calendar holidays &c (which may depend on the
   locale territory, not just the language).

> For instance, in such a case, we can allow people to create
> a new lang. env. by inheriting, for instance, Russian, and
> modifying coding-system to windows-1251.

Is this actually better than allowing them to specify (the equivalent
of) the locale ru_RU.windows-1251?