Re: Different (buffer-file-)coding-systems for different regions of one buffer? (for Rmail MIME)

[Kenichi Handa]

In article <address@hidden>, stktrc <address@hidden> writes:
> Yes, but decode-coding-region modifies the character content of the
> buffer (which is undesirable).  I want the decoding to happen before
> the characters hit the buffer.

??? I'm confused.  You wrote you want to have unmodified
encoded message in a buffer, but here you wrote decoding is
ok.

What's the difference in decodings that happen before and
after the characters being inserted the buffer?

> When Emacs loads a file (that is supposed to be encoded in for example
> ISO 2022, a 7 bit based encoding), does it first load the file
> contents into a buffer as ASCII text and then applies
> decode-coding-region to the entire buffer (conceptually)?

> I wouldn't think so (but I don't know).

Actually yes (conceptually), why not?

> Using decode-coding-region modifies the buffer contents because the
> actual characters present in the buffer change (the two characters AA
> might become the character Å or whatever, and hence the buffer
> contents has been modified).

If what you concern is the buffer modified flag, you can
reset that by set-buffer-modified-p.  If what you concern is
the undo list, you can also set buffer-undo-list to nil.
That is what insert-file-contents does when called with
VISIT arg as t.

---
Ken'ichi HANDA
address@hidden