GNU bug report logs - #4623
23.1.50; rmail changes encoding of characters on save

Previous Next

Full log

Message #100 received at 4623 <at> emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 4623 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#4623: 23.1.50; rmail changes encoding of characters on save
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:34:55 -0500

> Several reasons off the top of my head:
>   . It gives you an easily visible indication of how the message was
>     encoded.  (We hide the relevant mail headers by default, so they
>     are not visible unless you invoke rmail-toggle-header.)

So it's abusing buffer-file-coding-system for "message-coding-system"
(which of course is only meaningful is the message is not made up of
various parts using different coding-systems).

>   . It is useful when saving the current message to a file.

Good point.

>   . When replying to a message, rmail-reply uses it to set the
>     encoding of the *mail* buffer where you compose the reply, which
>     takes care of 99.99% of situations where the response needs to
>     have some non-trivial encoding that is not your system's native
>     one.

rmail-replay doesn't need to use buffer-file-coding-system for that, but
could just as well use some other variable for it, right?

> The last one of these is by far the most important reason, at least in
> my use pattern.

Then it's easy to fix.

> Maybe we need to set up an after-save-hook to restore the original
> encoding after saving the message collection?

That would be fine, yes.  I'd suggest to use an rmail-coding-system
variable as the canonical place to store the coding system used for the
currently shown message, use it in rmail-reply in preference to
buffer-file-coding-system, and simply copy rmail-coding-system to
buffer-file-coding-system whenever necessary, such as in
after-save-hook.

> Btw, I find rmail-swap-buffers incomplete in its handling of encoding
> and the modified flag.  It looks like it works by sheer luck, unless
> I'm missing something.

Could be.  I really think the first thing that needs to be done is to
get rid of Rmail's constant swapping of those buffers.  There should be
one swap when entering rmail-mode and one more when(if) leaving it,
no more.  That will get us rid of most of that insanity.


        Stefan

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.