Re: Disambiguate modeline character for UTF-8?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net>
> Cc: monnier@iro.umontreal.ca,  ulm@gentoo.org,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2020 21:59:00 +0300
> 
> > So on a TTY, you can have "UTF-8UTF-8UTF-8", if all the 3 encodings
> > are UTF-8?  Or do you only handle buffer-file-coding-system and ignore
> > the other 2 encodings?
> 
> Currently the other 2 encodings are ignored on a TTY, but since
> often all 3 encodings are the same, then maybe it would be enough

They might be the same in your locale, but it isn't necessarily the
situation for everyone.

> > It's okay to customize the mode line to your personal needs, but are
> > you really proposing this for a general-purpose feature in Emacs?
> > Because then we'd need to start by deciding what is "non-standard" in
> > this context.  For example, assuming the "standard" encoding is the
> > one determined by the locale, then if one lives in a non-UTF-8 locale,
> > they will always see "non-standard" strings in each and every .el file
> > they ever edit, which doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
> 
> A list of "standard" codings could be customizable, so every user
> could add more codings to it after learning their mnemonic characters.

My point is that "standard" depends on several factors, so a fixed
preferred value is probably not enough.

So I don't think you suggestion is a good idea in general, sorry.