Re: Displaying bytes

[Stefan Monnier]

> For instance, C-u C-x = on \224 says

>           character:   (4194196, #o17777624, #x3fff94)
>     preferred charset: tis620-2533 (TIS620.2533)
>          code point: 0x94
>              syntax: w        which means: word
>         buffer code: #x94
>           file code: #x94 (encoded by coding system no-conversion)
>             display: not encodable for terminal

Here C-u C-x = tells me:

        character: ¡ (4194209, #o17777641, #x3fffa1)
preferred charset: eight-bit (Raw bytes 128-255)
       code point: 0xA1
           syntax: w    which means: word
      buffer code: #xA1
        file code: not encodable by coding system utf-8-unix
          display: no font available

I don't know you see this "tis620" stuff.

> Perhaps it should say,
>           character: Stray byte   (4194196, #o17777624, #x3fff94)

We could do that indeed.

> What are the situations where a user is likely to see these stray
> bytes.

There pretty much shouldn't be any in multibyte buffers.

> When visiting a binary file, of course; but in that situation,
> nobody will be surprised or disappointed.

And presumably for binary files, the buffer will be unibyte.

> (It is also not clear to me what "ASCII compatible" means in this
> context.)

It means that the lower 128 chars coincide with those of ASCII.


        Stefan