Re: Guile integration and UTF-8

[Ludovic Courtès]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> skribis:

>> From: Paul Smith <address@hidden>
>> Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 22:31:29 -0400
>> Cc: address@hidden, Lars Ljung <address@hidden>
>> 
>> I haven't made a formal definition, but I'm seriously leaning towards
>> declaring that makefiles are UTF-8, always, and not supporting other
>> encodings.
>
> Given that the difference is using scm_file_encoding instead of
> scm_from_utf8_string, I don't see the reason why we should impose such
> a restriction.  Using "-*- coding: -*-" cookies is quite commonplace
> in the Free Software world, so it's not like Make will suddenly invent
> a new protocol.  We can use UTF-8 as the default, in the absence of a
> cookie, which I think will do what you want without unnecessarily
> restricting those who might need a different encoding.

Agreed: coding cookie, and UTF-8 as the default.

> If you wonder when a non-UTF-8 encoding might be needed, then imagine
> a Makefile which invokes some utility with a non-ASCII string argument
> in a locale that isn't UTF-8.  Also, for arguments that come from the
> Make command line (as in "make FOO='bar'") the string will come in the
> locale's encoding, which will not always be UTF-8; in that case,
> assuming UTF-8 is wrong, and we should use scm_c_eval_string as we do
> now.  I'm sure there's any number of similar use cases out there.

Yes.

Thanks,
Ludo’.