gnus-init-file encoding lossage

[Dave Love]

You wrote:

 > My ~/.gnus file contains (setq user-full-name "Kai Großjohann").
 > Usually, I store it on disk as iso-8859-1.  But I wanted to put
 > Unicode characters in the file, so I converted it to UTF-8 and put
 > "-*- coding: utf-8; -*-" in the first line.

 > This was using Oort Gnus from CVS, not Gnus 5.9.  Could you test this
 > with Gnus 5.9 as well?

I can't reproduce it.  I have the following in my source, which I
guess solves the problem :-).  It should probably go in 21.2.

I've no idea why the coding system might have been forced to binary.

 > I have now deleted the Unicode characters from ~/.gnus and changed
 > the file back to iso-8859-1 encoding, and now the problem is gone.
 > (I hope!)  Alas, I don't have any idea how to start debugging what
 > has happened.  Do you want to start debugging first, or can you give
 > me some pointers on how to proceed that I can have a look?

 > kai

I assume you'll DTRT with development Gnus.

[Using locate-library below obviously isn't relevant to the coding
munging but was there already and seems cleaner.]

*** gnus-start.el.~1.17.~       Tue Aug 21 18:24:24 2001
--- gnus-start.el       Wed Jan  2 16:08:57 2002
***************
*** 395,405 ****
  
  ;;; Internal variables
  
- (defvar gnus-startup-file-coding-system 'binary
-   "*Coding system for startup file.")
- 
  (defvar gnus-ding-file-coding-system 'emacs-mule
!   "*Coding system for ding file.")
  
  (defvar gnus-newsrc-file-version nil)
  (defvar gnus-override-subscribe-method nil)
--- 395,402 ----
  
  ;;; Internal variables
  
  (defvar gnus-ding-file-coding-system 'emacs-mule
!   "Coding system for ding file.")
  
  (defvar gnus-newsrc-file-version nil)
  (defvar gnus-override-subscribe-method nil)
***************
*** 427,445 ****
      (if gnus-init-inhibit
        (setq gnus-init-inhibit nil)
        (setq gnus-init-inhibit inhibit-next)
!       (let ((files (list gnus-site-init-file gnus-init-file))
!           file)
!       (while files
!         (and (setq file (pop files))
!              (or (and (file-exists-p file)
!                       ;; Don't try to load a directory.
!                       (not (file-directory-p file)))
!                  (file-exists-p (concat file ".el"))
!                  (file-exists-p (concat file ".elc")))
               (condition-case var
!                  (let ((coding-system-for-read
!                         gnus-startup-file-coding-system))
!                    (load file nil t))
                 (error
                  (error "Error in %s: %s" file var)))))))))
  
--- 424,435 ----
      (if gnus-init-inhibit
        (setq gnus-init-inhibit nil)
        (setq gnus-init-inhibit inhibit-next)
!       (let ((files (list gnus-site-init-file gnus-init-file)))
!       (dolist (file files)
!         (and file
!              (locate-library file)
               (condition-case var
!                  (load file nil t)
                 (error
                  (error "Error in %s: %s" file var)))))))))