Re: format conversion and local variables

[Richard Stallman]

      It doesn't work to make the
    variable buffer-local, I guess because the decoding is attempted
    before the file is loaded into a buffer, hence the variable cannot be
    given a buffer-local value before it is decoded (is that right?).

Yes.  You can't do this.

      So
    I thought the next best alternative is to use file local variables.

That is just a way to specify a buffer-local binding.  It can't work.

    with a local variables list, when I
    invoke find-file, Emacs apparently goes into an infinite loop (see
    below);

That is a bug, but I am not sure whether it is a bug in Emacs or in
your use of it.  The problem is that it decodes the format over and
over, because after decoding, the file appears to require the same
kind of decoding once again.

I think that in cases where decoding is really working
this kind of loop will not happen.