Re: [Bug-AUCTeX] Re: 11.81; *output* buffer is set to UTF-8

[David Kastrup]

Stefan Pofahl <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup <dak <at> gnu.org> writes:
>> 
>> stefan pofahl <stefan <at> pofahl.de> writes:
>> 
>> apt-get install emacs-snapshot-gtk auctex
>> 
>> (after heeding
>> <URL:http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/EmacsCvsAndDebian>) and
>> then use Emacs.  It will give you fewer headaches by far.  Note that
>> you don't need XEmacs to work with X11.
>
> Ok. I understood. Don't waste your time with xemacs!

If your main application is AUCTeX and/or your main work environment
is utf-8, I am afraid that this is the advice that will save you the
most trouble in the long run.

> Ok my problem is, that I can not edit german tex-documents 
> with the current xemacs, shiped with Debian (vers. Sarge).

There is no such thing as a "German TeX-document" from the view of an
editor.

> XEmacs writes the buffer in the wrong coding-system into
> the file.

What do you call "wrong coding system"?

> Is it possible, that the "emacs/xemacs/auctex" is looking for
> the argument of e.g. "inputenc":
> \usepackage[coding-system]{inputenc}
>
> and changes the file I/O coding-system in a propper way?

Emacs (the snapshot version that is to become Emacs 22) uses the
function latexenc-find-file-coding-system in order to figure out the
correct coding system to use for LaTeX files.

In addition, the same Emacs does a pretty good job in figuring out the
correct coding system when loading files it does not know about.

XEmacs 21.4 is much more shaky in that regard, in particular when the
locale has a different default from the file itself.  And if you are
planning to have it deal with utf-8, you need to do something like
(require un-define)
to prepare your XEmacs 21.4 for that, and even then it will do a bad
job.

A current version of XEmacs 21.5 might fare better, but it is, as far
as I know, not as reliable as emacs-snapshot.

>> > What is the reason? Do I have to install another version
>> > of auctex? Or can I put something in my init.el.
>> > (At the moment I can not check the version of auctex and
>> > xemacs, I'm sitting at another machine at the moment,
>> > but I will check and report).
>> 
>> You problem will hardly be AUCTeX-related, but more likely due to
>> wrong locale settings or XEmacs not understanding them.  Stable
>> XEmacs, even the mule variant, is really lousy with regard to dealing
>> with utf-8 files and environments.
>
> Ok, my problem seem's to be not auctex related, so if I want to work
> with xemacs together with auctex (for what reason ever), I have to
> my question to the xemacs-comunity.

Feel free to forward my comments there if you feel that I am biased
with my advice.

-- 
David Kastrup