Re: Coding problem with Euro sign

[Ralf Angeli]

* Reiner Steib (2005-12-15) writes:

> On Wed, Dec 14 2005, Ralf Angeli wrote:
>> would it be possible for Emacs to figure out the right coding system
>> by itself in the case at hand?  That means without me having to
>> specify coding systems explicitely by means of preferred coding
>> system options, coding cookies, or `C-x RET c' and similar.
>
> No.  A program cannot distinguish iso-8859-1 from iso-8859-2 or -15
> reliably.  Same for windows-1252 vs. windows-1258 (0x80 in your
> example file).  Heuristic approaches[1] might be possible, though.

Well, although the iso-8859 encodings you mentioned cannot be
distinguished, Emacs chooses one of them for files falling into the
respective category.  (I assume that Emacs looks at the language
environment as a hint for making the final decision.)  But for Windows
codepages it seems that Emacs does not even try.  So if this class of
encodings could be distinguished from others like ISO, Mac, UTF,
Whatsitsname encodings (that's the first question), could Emacs make a
similar guess to decide between e.g. windows-1252 and windows-1258
without horrible consequences?

-- 
Ralf