Re: "coding: utf-8" emacs local variable in ChangeLog (?)

[Mark Kettenis <mark.kettenis@xs4all.nl>]

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> Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:34:22 +0200
> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> 
> > Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 00:56:28 +0100 (CET)
> > From: Mark Kettenis <mark.kettenis@xs4all.nl>
> > CC: brobecker@adacore.com, gdb@sourceware.org, ludo@gnu.org
> > 
> > > > I can see why Ludovic wants to have his name spelled properly, but
> > > > he should realize it'll look like "Ludovic Court?\203?is" to many
> > > > people.
> > > 
> > > Not if they use Emacs.
> > 
> > What do you think I'm using?  Ok, that's in emacs running in screen
> > running in an xterm, and those question marks are really some funny
> > looking character that I wouldn't know how to type.
> 
> "C-u C-x =" will spell what is that character, and there's
> latin1-disp.el that can display quite a few of these characters even
> on a text terminal.

This is what C-u C-x says about the funny character in Ludo's name:

    character: Ã (0303, 195, 0xc3)
      charset: eight-bit-graphic (8-bit graphic char (0xA0..0xFF))
   code point: 195
       syntax: whitespace
     category:
  buffer code: 0xC3
    file code: 0xC3 (encoded by coding system raw-text-unix)
terminal code: not encodable

> > But even if I look at the 2007 ChangeLog with emacs running as an X
> > application Ludo's last name shows up with that funny capital A with
> > a tiled and " after it.  I'm fairly sure that's not right.
> 
> That's _exactly_ the reason to add the `coding' cookie: you were
> looking at what happens when Emacs tries to interpret a utf-8 encoded
> text as if it were Latin-1 (or maybe Latin-9) encoded.  Now, after the
> cookie was added, I see Ludo's name displayed correctly.

I'm not saying that adding the `coding' cookie is a problem.  I'm
arguing that turning ChangeLog into a UTF-8 encoded file was a bad
decision, since there are enough systems where it will not be properly
displayed.