XEmacs does not default to use UTF-8 for UTF8 locales

[Jarl]

Binary package hint: xemacs21

my locale is da_DK.UTF-8, that is my LANG=da_DK.UTF-8

When I use XEmacs I would expect default coding system is utf-8, both when opening text files, starting new text files, and when entering non-ascii characters. However the default is ISO 8859-1 (aka. latin1)

Therefore I need to additionally have these lines in my .xemacs/init.el file
(require 'un-define)
(set-coding-priority-list '(utf-8))
(set-coding-category-system 'utf-8 'utf-8-unix)
(set-default-buffer-file-coding-system 'utf-8-unix)

I would expect that XEmacs system initialisation files was configured to set up XEmacs according to the LANG env variable, that is the case in OpenSuSE.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Jan 27 20:26:35 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx wl
Package: xemacs21-mule 21.4.22-2ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=da_DK.UTF-8
 SHELL=/usr/bin/tcsh
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-17.54-generic
SourcePackage: xemacs21
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-17-generic x86_64
XsessionErrors:
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:2771): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed
 (firefox:2980): GLib-WARNING **: g_set_prgname() called multiple times

[Jarl (jarl-dk)]

This is taken from the Emacs manual (I believe that XEmacs works the same way)(http://www.gnu.org/s/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Language-Environments.html) :

"Some operating systems let you specify the character-set locale you are using by setting the locale environment variables LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, or LANG.2 During startup, Emacs looks up your character-set locale's name in the system locale alias table, matches its canonical name against entries in the value of the variables locale-charset-language-names and locale-language-names, and selects the corresponding language environment if a match is found. (The former variable overrides the latter.) It also adjusts the display table and terminal coding system, the locale coding system, the preferred coding system as needed for the locale, and—last but not least—the way Emacs decodes non-ASCII characters sent by your keyboard.

If you modify the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, or LANG environment variables while running Emacs, you may want to invoke the set-locale-environment function afterwards to readjust the language environment from the new locale."

Jarl

[Jarl (jarl-dk)]

Is anybody interested in fixing this???

Jarl

[era (era)]

> Is anybody interested in fixing this???

Realistically, not a lot of Xemacs bugs seem to get a lot of attention these days. However, if you can supply a tested patch (perhaps a port from OpenSuSE, perhaps submitted upstream to Debian) your chances of seeing a fix improve dramatically, but even then, Xemacs by itself, and Xemacs on Ubuntu seems to be stuck in limbo without an active maintainer.

Please understand that this is a comment from an interested bystander; I have no inside information about Emacs, Xemacs, or Ubuntu.