Re: gnus should accept UTF8 even if UTF-8 is standard

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Eli Zaretskii writes:
 > > From: Miles Bader <address@hidden>
 > > Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:21:25 +0900
 > > Cc: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden>, address@hidden,
 > >    Stefan Monnier <address@hidden>, address@hidden, address@hidden
 > > 
 > > Perhaps something like `canonicalize-coding-system-name' would be good.
 > 
 > That implies that the return value would be a string, not the coding
 > system itself.  I suggest we return the coding system (or nil), not
 > just the name.

The coding system *is* just a name (AIUI, for Emacs; XEmacs and old
Mule exposed the internal coding system object for reasons I don't
claim to understand).  That name happens to be a symbol, that's all.

I think it would be reasonable for this function to also accept
symbols (and attempt to guess coding systems from their print-names,
if they are not coding system names).  Eg, return 'utf-8 if handed
'utf8 or "UTF8".

 > Some time back in this thread I suggested `coding-system-for-charset'
 > (since the argument strings will be charsets).

Actually, if I recall the thread correctly, normally they won't.
They'll be *MIME* charsets, which correspond to Emacs *coding
systems*.