Subject: Re: bug#76993: Init files and UTF-8

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:06:45 -0700

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

>> Is the above only true on some platforms?
>
> What matters is the locale's codeset, not the platform.  Though it is
> true that most users of most platforms except Windows use UTF-8 these
> days, I know of at least some users of GNU/Linux who still set up
> their systems to use non-UTF-8 encoding.

Sure, I can see that some people will do that.

They will run into all kinds of fun, I'm sure, and not just in Emacs.

>> Should that be noted, or should it be moved to some platform
>> specific documentation?
>
> We could do that, but is that worth the hassle?
>
>  . having a coding cookie can do no harm
>  . having a coding cookie makes the init file portable and usable from
>    several different systems with no subtle problems

The main hassle is not the coding cookie, but the complication of having
an entire section in the documentation.  I was thinking that perhaps we
could spare our users that.

The portability argument is fair enough.  Maybe this suggests that this
might no longer warrant a section in the manual and could be moved to
(for example) the MS-Windows FAQ, or something?

>  . explaining when this could matter and when it couldn't is not
>    simple and could confuse users who do not know enough about locales
>    and encodings
>
>> Should the default be changed somehow, such that we always use UTF-8
>> when reading the init file?
>
> Why would we want to make such a breaking change, when all we suggest
> is to have a coding cookie, in a small minority of cases where init
> files bind non-ASCII keys?

Maybe this "small minority of cases" part could be clarified without
getting into the details.  The section reads to me as if it's always a
problem, which seems misleading.