Re: [Emacs-diffs] master db828f6: Don't rely on defaults in decoding UTF-8 encoded Lisp files

[Paul Eggert]

Stefan Monnier wrote:
> we won't want to have redundant "coding:utf-8" tags everywhere, so we need
> to find ways to go from here (i.e. "need a coding: tag for any non-ASCII
> file") to there.

Yes, requiring coding: cookies for every UTF-8 file is error-prone.  We 
can't easily put cookies into every such file, as some of them are 
copied verbatim from other sources.  And even for our own files, it's 
too easy to add a bit of UTF-8 text to a cookieless file and forget to 
add a cookie.

Here's a better idea.  Developers that use a UTF-8 locale are OK 
already.  Let's suggest to the remaining developers that they put 
something like the following into their .emacs:

  (add-hook 'auto-coding-functions (lambda (size) 'utf-8))

This will let Emacs default to UTF-8 for files that don't already have a 
coding cookie.