Re: ruby-mode : ruby-mode-set-encoding

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Interesting.  Why don't they just force the use of some arbitrarily
>> chosen variant of Unicode?
> To avoid "arbitrarily" breaking software systems and development
> environments that target other character sets.

Sorry, I meant "didn't" instead of "don't": these are recent programming
languages, and since Java was able to do it why couldn't Python do it?

> You cannot simply run all files through recode, as that will break
> strings that display on legacy terminals or have been interned
> in databases.

Nice theoretical problem, but I think that Java proves it to be
a non-issue in practice.  Anyway, it's too late now,


        Stefan