Re: Defaults for elisp-mode files

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Stefan Monnier writes:

 > No, I mean to set auto-coding-list so that .el files get read as utf-8.

I was afraid you meant that, but one can always hope. ;-)

 > I don't think so: if the file doesn't have a `coding:' cookie but has
 > significant non-ASCII chars in it, we usually sooner or later get bug
 > reports about it (because someone loaded the file in an locale where
 > the encoding ended up not recognized correctly).

Funny, that's another bug that just doesn't show up on XEmacs channels
that I know of.  The reason is simple: ISO-2022-JP is unambiguous and
very reliably detectable.[1]

Very occasionally somebody will ask for help with a 3rd party file.  I
explain about coding cookies and C-u C-x C-f ... C-x C-m f iso-2022-jp
and never hear from them about that again.

Of course, all of the above would be true of UTF-8.

 > > While you *can* set `auto-coding-alist', I think it will cause a lot
 > > of pain.
 > 
 > We'll see ;-)

You were warned. ;-)

Footnotes: 
[1]  At least in my experience.