GNU bug report logs - #7256
Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal? vs control chars.

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: jidanni <at> jidanni.org
To: bugs <at> gnus.org
Cc: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org, rfrancoise <at> debian.org
Subject: Re: Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal? vs control chars.
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 12:41:49 +0800

>>>>> "LMI" == Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org> writes:
LMI> jidanni <at> jidanni.org writes:

>> "Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal? (y or n)  y" will still pass
>> control characters. Yes they are ASCII, but who usually wants to pass them?

LMI> grep -nH -e "Convert non-ASCII" *.el

LMI> Grep finished with no matches found at Tue Oct 19 18:45:12

24.0.50/lisp/mail/emacsbug.el.gz:345:              (y-or-n-p "Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal? "))

    ;; Check the buffer contents and reject non-English letters.
    ;; FIXME message-mode probably does this anyway.
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (skip-chars-forward "\0-\177")
    (unless (eobp)
      (if (or report-emacs-bug-no-confirmation
              (y-or-n-p "Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal? "))
          (while (progn (skip-chars-forward "\0-\177")
                        (not (eobp)))
            (let ((ch (following-char)))
              (delete-char 1)
              (insert (format "=%02x" ch))))))

Anyway, the typical scenario is the user is asked to submit a backtrace,
and of course backtraces are full of nasty (useful, even?) binary mess
characters, which triggers multiple question upon trying to send, some
from the above, some from message.el.

Anyway, looks like time to fix the FIXME above.

Message #8 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
To: jidanni <at> jidanni.org
Cc: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org, rfrancoise <at> debian.org, bugs <at> gnus.org,
	emacs-devel <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal? vs control chars.
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:14:21 +0200

jidanni <at> jidanni.org writes:

>       (if (or report-emacs-bug-no-confirmation
>               (y-or-n-p "Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal? "))

[...]

> Anyway, the typical scenario is the user is asked to submit a backtrace,
> and of course backtraces are full of nasty (useful, even?) binary mess
> characters, which triggers multiple question upon trying to send, some
> from the above, some from message.el.

Yeah, that seems really suboptimal, but I'm not sure what the fix should
be.  Converting everything to hex seems rather odd, since that would
make látin and unicode characters also be hexified, which is weird.

I think the right fix is to remove this question altogether from
emacsbug.el, and inhibit the "remove non-printable characters" query
from message.el.

Any objections?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi <at> gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Message #11 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: bugs <at> gnus.org
Cc: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org, emacs-devel <at> gnu.org, rfrancoise <at> debian.org,
	bugs <at> gnus.org, jidanni <at> jidanni.org
Subject: Re: Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal? vs control chars.
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:56:05 +0200

> From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
> Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:14:21 +0200
> Cc: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org, rfrancoise <at> debian.org, bugs <at> gnus.org,
> 	emacs-devel <at> gnu.org
> 
> Yeah, that seems really suboptimal, but I'm not sure what the fix should
> be.  Converting everything to hex seems rather odd, since that would
> make látin and unicode characters also be hexified, which is weird.

I think the right fix for control characters below 32 is to convert
them to the ^X ASCII representation.

Message #14 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> IRO.UMontreal.CA>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org, jidanni <at> jidanni.org, rfrancoise <at> debian.org,
	bugs <at> gnus.org, emacs-devel <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal? vs control chars.
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:42:17 -0400

> I think the right fix for control characters below 32 is to convert
> them to the ^X ASCII representation.

I'm not sure I'd agree enough to make it a promptless default.


        Stefan

Message #17 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Cc: emacs-devel <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal? vs control chars.
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:52:02 +0200

Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> IRO.UMontreal.CA> writes:

>> I think the right fix for control characters below 32 is to convert
>> them to the ^X ASCII representation.
>
> I'm not sure I'd agree enough to make it a promptless default.

I think it might make sense for the bug reports, but I think that (in
general) there's no point in doing any conversion of anything.  I mean,
the mail will be encoded with a proper transfer encoding when sending,
won't it?

Unless one of the sending methods used by emacsbugs doesn't encode
anything. 

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi <at> gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

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