Re: Info pages opened with an incorrect coding system

[Karl Berry]

    I agree that it should be the default.

Very well, I'll change that.

    but still produce the Local Variables section, because without 8-bit
    characters the result is a plain ASCII file.  

As you know, if the input uses 8-bit characters, the output will also
use 8-bit characters, regardless of --enable-encoding.

    source was written well, 

I can't agree that it is bad to use literal characters instead of
Texinfo commands.  It makes for a far more readable source, among other
things.

    IOW, I think the fact that the document specifies @documentencoding
    should be enough for makeinfo to obey; relying on an additional
    command-line switch is unreliable.

I don't see that it's unreliable, although I could agree with
"inconvenient".  I don't recall all the details of why we created
--enable-encoding all those years ago.  At this point, it does seem more
useful to make it the default, so that any document with
@documentencoding gets the output in that encoding, as best we can
manage.

    Wouldn't linking against libiconv solve all these with minimal fuss?

Sure, hopefully libiconv would be helpful, but I highly doubt the
"minimal fuss".  I suspect it will mean essentially rewriting the entire
program (not that that would be a bad thing, but ...), because it is
changing the fundamental way in which characters are both read and
written.  If you want to delve into it, you're welcome to try.  I rather
doubt you have an excess of spare hacking time available either, though ...

Karl