Re: How to change line endings - where is it explained?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 22:17:44 +0200
> From: Lennart Borgman <address@hidden>
> CC:  address@hidden
> 
> >> - Something about line endings too in "(emacs) Files", possibly in 
> >> connection with the link above.
> >
> > Ditto: "Visiting" already talks about EOLs.
> >   
> Oh, I found it! But I did not see it before. The reason is that I am 
> nearly always searching, not reading.

That is almost certainly not the right way to use the manual.
Searching is a vehicle of getting to the right node, but once you are
already there, you should read it in its entirety.

> In "(emacs) Visiting" the term for 
> line endings is "convention it uses to separate lines". Could perhaps 
> "(line endings)" be added right after this? :

I actually dislike the term "line endings"; "end-of-line format" is a
better term, IMO.

> >> - "(emacs) Coding Systems" should mention 'dos, 'unix and 'mac.
> >
> > It already does, please take a closer look.
> >   
> I just checked out a fresh copy from CVS and I am afraid I still can not 
> find anything about the use of just 'dos, 'unix and 'mac

??? How can that be?  Are we talking about the same thing here?
Here's the fragment I had in mind:

       Each of the listed coding systems has three variants which specify
    exactly what to do for end-of-line conversion:

    `...-unix'
         Don't do any end-of-line conversion; assume the file uses newline
         to separate lines.  (This is the convention normally used on Unix
         and GNU systems.)

    `...-dos'
         Assume the file uses carriage-return linefeed to separate lines,
         and do the appropriate conversion.  (This is the convention
         normally used on Microsoft systems.(2))

    `...-mac'
         Assume the file uses carriage-return to separate lines, and do the
         appropriate conversion.  (This is the convention normally used on
         the Macintosh system.)

       These variant coding systems are omitted from the
    `list-coding-systems' display for brevity, since they are entirely
    predictable.  For example, the coding system `iso-latin-1' has variants
    `iso-latin-1-unix', `iso-latin-1-dos' and `iso-latin-1-mac'.

> like in
> 
>     M-x set-buffer-file-coding-system RET unix RET
> 
> As I understand it this changes just the line endings to unix style 
> (LF). Would it not be good to mention this feature?

Ah, you mean this paragraph (from "Text Coding"):

       You can also use this command to specify the end-of-line conversion
    (*note end-of-line conversion: Coding Systems.) for encoding the
    current buffer.  For example, `C-x <RET> f dos <RET>' will cause Emacs
    to save the current buffer's text with DOS-style CRLF line endings.