[asdf-devel] Merging asdf-encodings into asdf?

[Douglas Crosher]

On 12/08/2012 03:57 AM, Raymond Toy wrote:
>>>>>> "Far" == Far  <Far> writes:
>     >> The next release of the SCL integrates comprehensive support for
>     >> reading a text file character encoding from an Emacs style coding
>     >> attribute.  The support was contributed to public domain CMUCL if
>     >> you wish to examine it.  This allows 'load and 'compiler, and the
>     >> debugger, and many editors, to also use the correct encoding.
>     >> The new external-format has been named :file-attribute.  It has
>     >> not been decided if this will be the :default, but a separate default
>     >> will be provided for lisp source files.  I am open to working with
>     >> other vendors on standardising the support, but there has been
>     >> little interest.
>     >> 
>     Far> I believe I saw an earlier version of it. Is it in the current version
>     Far> of CMUCL from CVS?
>
> No. The code was checked into git, but backed before the release and
> hasn't been re-enabled.  While it's pretty cool, we wonder if it would
> not be better handled as an external library.

If a CL implementation does not want the burden of implementing
the reading of the file attribute then it also has the relatively good
option of supporting just UTF-8 and asking users to use this and
asking users to transcode lisp source files to UTF-8.  If library authors
include a coding file attribute in their source then this conversion
can be easily automated, and it should be easy for quicklisp to do
this transcoding when unpacking a library.  Quicklisp could also
include some auto-detection and hints to help with legacy code
that does not have the coding file attribute - last time I checked a
few hints were needed.

Regards
Douglas Crosher