[asdf-devel] source file encoding

[Daniel Herring]

On Sun, 15 Apr 2012, Robert Goldman wrote:
> On 4/15/12 Apr 15 -3:46 PM, Daniel Herring wrote:
...
>> What if ASDF allowed one ASD file to set up a dynamic scope when
>> including another ASD file?  I think this might also clean up some
>> places where people are currently invoking CLOS.
>
> I think that suggestion won't work for a couple of reasons:
>
> 1.  As Faré points out, it's not the person who loads the system who
> knows what the charset should be, it's the author of that system.  So
> it's wrong to use this kind of mechanism to allow the loader to control
> the charset of someone else's code: we need to allow the AUTHOR (rather
> than the loader) of the system to specify the charset.

My suggestion was to have the author distribute two system files.  The 
first is portably readable using ASCII, and it specifies that the second 
uses a different character set.


> 2.  It's not at all clear what that dynamic scoping would mean.
> Remember that the defsystem is not necessarily parsed inside the
> loading, and that there is the whole confounding issue of the
> construction and then execution of the operation plan.

Well, this isn't a problem when tweaking reader code; but I agree that it 
could be a problem for most other ASDF operations.

Oh well, it was an idea.  Given that it does not generalize as I had 
hoped, the mode lines do look simpler.

- Daniel