Re: Automatically Saved Files Employ Different Coding

[Miles Bader]

Alexander Winston <address@hidden> writes:
> > > As you can see, the automatically saved file uses a different coding,
> > > emacs-mule, instead of the default, utf-8.
>
> > That makes it (significantly) faster, and also makes it sure that the save
> > will work and will not encounter a char that can't be encoded.
> 
> Which characters cannot be encoded using UTF-8?

Do `C-h h', and then save the resulting buffer as a file, forcing it to
use utf-8.  Now re-read the file.

Note that it looks ... _mostly_ the same.  But not exactly.  [And this
is assuming you have `utf-translate-cjk-mode' turned on; otherwise, it
couldn't ready any of the CJK characters.]

IOW, saving as utf-8 is a lossy operation (even if it tries hard not to
be), which is not what you want for auto-save files...

-Miles
-- 
In New York, most people don't have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you
have to take the subway to their house.  And sometimes on the way, the train
is delayed and you get impatient, so you have to kill someone on the subway.
  [George Carlin]