[OS X Emacs] M-x shell and file names with umlauts

[Ian Eure]

On Oct 7, 2008, at 11:58 AM, David Reitter wrote:

> On 7 Oct 2008, at 14:49, Ian Eure wrote:
>>>
>>> then, suddenly, "ls" does the right thing!  I'm not sure what the  
>>> correct setting for the language bit would be - en_US.UTF-8 works  
>>> just as well.
>>>
>> The format is:
>>
>> lang_COUNTRY.ENCODING
>>
>> e.g. en_US.UTF-8 is US English encoded in UTF-8.
>
> Well yeah, I tried de_DE first because my test file name had a  
> German language umlaut, but the language doesn't matter for the  
> coding when it's UTF-8.  The real question is how I would detect the  
> right language from the user's settings.  You address this question:
>
I'm sure there's some API you can get it from, as well. This is  
definitely not what you want, though. I don't know if you tried this,  
but give it a shot:

LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 ls --help


>> I don't know if Emacs even has the ability to set environment  
>> variables for inferior processes. I think this is the job of your  
>> shell or system init files. I'd suggest adding this to your  
>> ~/.profile:
>>
>> eval `locale | sed 's/^/export /'`
>
> Well I wouldn't ever want to alter the user's .profile from  
> Aquamacs, but of course I can set an env variable from within Emacs,  
> and inferior processes should inherit that.
> (M-x shell does not seem to start a login shell, by the way - just a  
> shell).
>
> The other problem is that from M-x shell, this is my locale:
>
> ~$ locale
> LANG=
> LC_COLLATE="C"…
>
> and from a login shell opened in iTerm, I get
>
> ~$ locale
> LANG="en_GB.US-ASCII"…
>
> Neither of them would be sufficient to display non-ASCII file names.
Hm, yeah, locale sets LC_* based on LANG. If it's not set, you get  
"C", which is the legacy UNIX locale. In Terminal's preferences,  
there's a "Set LANG environment variable on startup" checkbox, so I  
assume it has some way to query the system-wide preferences to get  
that. I think you need to do the same thing in Aquamacs.


> Isn't at least the coding part of the locale up to the terminal that  
> is being used, i.e. Emacs with it's shell buffer?
>
Well, you can't set just the encoding part. You have to set the full  
locale, so you need to know what that is first.


>> Setting the coding-system for process I/O like you did (C-x RET p)  
>> is a part of setting your language environment. I'd suggest you set  
>> it to UTF-8, which can be accomplished by going to Options ->  
>> Language -> Set Language Environment -> UTF-8.
>
> So, just to make it clear, you're suggesting that we set the default  
> language environment that an Aquamacs user gets, to UTF-8?
> Sounds to me like this has some grave implications.  Originally I  
> was thinking of just modifying what M-x shell does, but of course  
> one could consider this.
>
Yeah, I don't think you should do that. I was just saying that it  
would be a good idea for you personally, not as a default for  
Aquamacs. It will make sense at some point in the (hopefully not too  
distant) future, as UTF-8 will replace other encodings.

I see nothing wrong with:

  - Determining the user’s locale
  - Determining the preferred encoding (from the chosen language  
environment)
  - Setting $LANG to that locale/encoding - if it's not already set.  
Probably be a good idea to warn if the chosen language environment  
clashes with $LANG.
  - Setting process I/O to match that encoding

  - Ian