Re: Strange behaviour with dired and UTF8

[Kenichi Handa]

In article <address@hidden>, "Jan D." <address@hidden> writes:
>>  It is sure that there's a possibility that encoding a
>>  filename can't get the original filename.  But, Emacs anyway
>>  can't handle such a filename.

> Why not if it has the original filename?

I'm talking about the general situation, not restricted to
dired.  I think this problem must be fixed in general cases,
not only for dired.  And, always carrying around the
original filename with a filename is one means.  But that
requires huge change to Emacs.  In addition, there are many
cases that modify a filename as a string.

>>>  This work (original representation -> view representation -> original
>>>  representation) should not be needed, IMHO.  Why just not keep the
>>>  original representation around (some kind of text property on the file
>>>  name?) and always use that when operating on the file?  That change
>>>  would be transparent to users.
>> 
>>  A user may type C-x C-f FILENAME in the dired buffer.  With
>>  the above method, we don't know how to encode FILENAME.

> Why would this change?  I am only talking about file names that dired
> reads from a directory.  No need to change C-x C-f.

Typing `f' works fine but C-x C-f doesn't, which is not a
good behaviour.

>>  And, even if one types `f' to visit a file, in that file
>>  buffer, we loose the information of the original
>>  representation.

> Then Emacs as a whole should change.

Yes, my proposal is to change Emacs' behavior as to filename
handing as a whole in a fairly low cost.

> If I open a file from dired, modify it and save it, I
> expect it to save to the same file name.  Are you saying
> there are situations where Emacs fails to do this?

No.  As far as I know, there's no system that allows
stateful encoding on filenames.  And if Emacs decodes a
filename by one of stateless coding systems (despite that it
is the correct one or not), it can be encoded back correctly
by the same coding system.  For instance, I think you can
open and save a file of utf-8 name in latin-1 lang. env. in
dired correctly (although the filename is not shown
correctly).

By the way, I've just thought of this weird situation.  One
has a file of utf-8 name in a directly of latin-1 name.  :-(
I think we can say sorry in such a case.

---
Ken'ichi HANDA
address@hidden