Subject: Re: bug#24759: 25.1.50; electric-quote-mode

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2016 01:24:15 -0700

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> UTF-8 should be the most-preferred multibyte encoding nowadays, unless there is
>> a reasonable indication that the user prefers something else.
>
> What kind of indication do you have in mind?

A locale that uses some non-UTF-8 multibyte encoding.

>> In a unibyte European locale, UTF-8 should be the first-listed
>> multibyte encoding by default.
>
> Why not list it the first always?

I wouldn't object. People who prefer non-UTF-8 multibyte locales might not like 
it (I'm not such a person so I can't say).

> If the single prompt we now issue already annoys
> you, it hardly makes sense to do the same multiple times.

It's not merely the prompt that annoys me. It's that the prompt can occur long 
after the problem it diagnoses.

We could suppress the prompt in later occurrences if the user doesn't want to 
see it again.

>> It's a bit like spelling checking.
>
> It's not.  A mis-spelled buffer can be saved, but we cannot save a
> buffer without knowing how to encode it.

A bit like, not exactly like. The point is that users often find it more 
convenient to see problems right away. For example, although an 
improperly-parenthesized Lisp buffer can be saved, it's still nice to have 
parenthesis-matching enabled as I type, so that I can see and fix parenthesis 
problems while they're still fresh in my mind.