Re: 23.0.60; Defaut encoding for XML files should be undefined (instead of utf-8)

[Miles Bader]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> writes:
> > I proposed _adding_ some functionality that _uses_
> > prefer-coding-system (or more likely, uses whatever underlying
> > mechanism prefer-coding-system uses).  No functionality would be
> > removed.
>
> Not removed, disabled (in some cases).  Specifically, if the *user* or
> some application programmer uses `prefer-coding-system' with a
> non-Unicode (non-UTF-8?) argument, he won't get the result he expects
> for some XML files.

That is already the case.  My suggestion would not make it worse.  If
anything, improve the situation by allowing prefer-coding-system to work
more often.  In any case, no hamstringing.

> In case you're forgotten, this is precisely the kind of behavior that
> distresses the OP.

And my suggestion would likely _improve_ the situtation from the point
of the OP.  Maybe not entirely to his satisfaction -- there are probably
cases where latin1 can be mistaken for utf8, and do fix that would
likely require more explicit action on his part -- but more
automatically.

You're probably right that to make things really work the way the OP
wants, some mechanism to help him set up the desired file associations
would be more reliable.

However I do not think it's a good idea to make simple _visiting_ of a
file modify that file.  That would be _really_ annoying.  If it's deemed
desirable to use some sort of user query to set up encoding info in a
funny case like this, the information should be kept in memory (of
course it could be made permanent if the user chose to save that file
for other reasons).

-Miles

-- 
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