[asdf-devel] source file encoding

[Orivej Desh]

This is just a curt supplement to Faré's answer.  (Hopefully I won't be
bothered anymore by common-lisp.net antispam machinery.)

> Is there some reason why we must put the external-format into the
> property list instead of just giving it a slot in the component class
> definition?

It was my ignorance.

> Also, what sort of an entity are the external format values?  Is it
> always a keyword symbol?  Can we say that it should always be a keyword
> and that we will massage it to something else, if necessary, for the
> benefit of the implementation when reading a file?

Maybe yes.  Consider that e.g. some implementations accept more options
(mostly to control line terminators) — CLISP as instances of
ext:encoding, LispWorks as lists like '(:latin-1 :eol-style :lf); but
then CLISP explicitly says that line terminators don't matter during
input.

> In that case we could have an accessor that will do the
> implementation-specific massaging for us (e.g., we could store :utf-8,
> but on clisp we would present charset:utf-8 when reading...).  That
> seems somehow tidier to me, rather than changing the value behind the
> programmer's back as we do here.  OTOH, we do quietly change symbols to
> strings, so maybe I'm just talking through my hat.

I'd appreciate if you explain in a more detail what happens when and
how.  Is it like in the attached patch, but with logic moved from the
setf'er to the accessor?

> I wasn't sure I understood the following paragraph, either

If one goes beyond ASCII, saves not in UTF-8 (as expected on MS Windows,
but even on Linux LispWorks Personal IDE tried to save a file in
Latin-1), manages local projects with ASDF and upgrades ASDF, he will be
affected.

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