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Re: Understanding how to specify UTF-8
From: |
Will Parsons |
Subject: |
Re: Understanding how to specify UTF-8 |
Date: |
21 Apr 2017 17:36:06 GMT |
User-agent: |
slrn/1.0.3 (CYGWIN_NT-6.1) |
Jason Rumney wrote:
> On Saturday, 8 April 2017 07:43:58 UTC+8, Will Parsons wrote:
>> I want to always use Unicode/UTF-8 unless otherwise specified. I've noticed
>> that I've attempted to do this in my .emacs file in two separate ways on two
>> separate platforms:
>>
>> 1) (setq-default buffer-file-coding-system 'utf-8-unix)
>>
>> 2) (set-language-environment "UTF-8")
>>
>> Both seem to work, but I'm wondering if there are subtle differences between
>> the two that I should be aware of.
>
> The first only sets the default coding system for Files.
>
> The second sets it for for everything, including system clipboard, file
> names, process I/O ...
>
> On modern GNU/Linux, Mac or other Posix based OS's, you probably want
> everything in UTF-8, so the latter is correct.
>
> On Windows, the system itself does not support UTF-8 fully, so the former is
> safer. For clipboard and file names on Windows, the latest versions of Emacs
> will use Unicode regardless of what you specify for the coding system, it is
> really only process I/O that is the problem - Cygwin and Mingw apps may
> support UTF-8 I/O, but native Windows apps (including the cmd.exe shell) can
> have severe difficulties with it.
Thank you for this detailed answer. Interestingly enough, I have them
reversed in my Unix vs Windows configurations.
--
Will