[slime-devel] problem with utf-8

[Helmut Eller]

* Nicolas Lamirault [2006-02-11 12:52+0100] writes:

> hello,
>
> i must read a file encoded in utf-8
> if i read this file from sbcl started in an xterm,
> i haven't got any error.
> i try  to make this operation in  my SLIME environment, but  i have an
> error.
> so i put this in my emacs's configuration :
>
> (setq slime-net-coding-system 'utf-8-unix)
>
> but after this i can't start slime
> this is the error :
>
> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (cl-assertion-failed default-enable-multibyte-characters)

To use utf8 with SLIME you should set
default-enable-multibyte-characters to t before connecting.  It is
true by default and if you aren't sure what it does, it's better to
set it to t.  Emacs uses two internal text representations and the
distinction between those representation is, unfortunately, very
visible at the Elisp level, e.g. weird things happen when a unibyte
string is inserted in a multibyte buffer.  To reduce such problems
with SLIME, we enforce that default-enable-multibyte-characters is
true (and that most text will be in multibyte representation).

All this only applies to Emacs; XEmacs has apparently a much cleaner
design in this regard.

Helmut.