Re: contrib/ucs-tables.el obsolete for Emacs 21.3

[Dave Love <d.love@dl.ac.uk>]

Reiner Steib <4.uce.03.r.s@nurfuerspam.de> writes:

> Additionally, `ucs-tables.el' without using a newer version of
> `utf-8.el' (replacing the pre-dumped code) isn't so useful in Emacs
> 21.[1-2].

I disagree.  It precisely solves the unification issue that people
continually complained about (and normally claimed was impossible to
solve).  I'm currently using it in Emacs 21.2.

(car (find-coding-systems-string 
      (string (make-char 'latin-iso8859-1 255)
	      (make-char 'latin-iso8859-15 255))))
  => iso-latin-1

> See the commentary section of `rs-gnus-unify.el'[*] for
> more explanations.
>
> Opinions?

Without wishing to sound rude:

 * If the documentation is unclear, or there are problems with the
   code, it would be nice to get bug reports.  It may well be
   difficult to use, but I'm not sure how -- it's just loading one or
   two compiled files.

 * What's wrong with the version I've distributed, which is what I
   actually use in 21.2?

 * The suggestion to modify iso-2022-7bit is a bad one, as handa says.
   I've also told people they probably don't want to unify on decoding
   generally, especially if they're working on Emacs code, and I don't
   understand why they do it anyway.  I purposely didn't suggest using
   a modified iso-2022 systems because it isn't harmless.

 * I don't know about this `latin-unity' thing, but XEmacs can't do
   the same -- it simply doesn't have the necessary facilities.

Things like that file which will clash with future versions should be
installed in the version-specific site-lisp directory, which is what
it's there for.  Have people been recommending something else?