Re: Have Emacs guess the charset?

[Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net>]

On Mon, 20 Aug 2001, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net> writes:
> 
>> `detect-coding-region'
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> I've just tried it in an (unmarked) big5 message.  (Well, I'm guessing
> it was big5.)  The function returned the following list:
> 
> (iso-latin-1-unix raw-text-unix chinese-big5-unix no-conversion)
> 
> Which means that the correct answer is the third-most-likely guess...
> Is big5 particularly difficult to guess, or is the function bad at
> guessing?

I think that the answer is probably "both", but I am not really certain.
I don't know too much about MULE, but both Kai and I have tried to
support it at various times with TRAMP.

So, my recollection of BIG5 encoding is that it is an escaped-in set of
bytes in the 128-255 range, with iso-2022 codeset shifts to get to and
from ASCII.

That means it's probably not that easy to pick. Which, you understand,
does not make the function all that smart.

Under XEmacs, it's pretty simplistic in it's detection of possible
coding system matches.

Er, you did call it on the region that *DID NOT* include the ASCII email
headers, right?

If that's true, I guess that you are pretty much short of luck. :(
        Daniel

-- 
There is censorship in this country, all right, make no mistake about that,
but also make no mistake about its source...While the government will not
censor, apparently the networks will. The irreparable damage to the public is
all the same.
        -- Nicholas Johnson, Federal Communications Commissioner, _
           New York Times_, (April 8, 1969)