Re: address@hidden: setting utf-16 as file-name-coding-system locks up emacs]

[Jason Rumney]

Kenichi Handa wrote:

> I belive that Windows itself has a function to handle such a
> file name consistently.  So, I think the best is to make a
> speical coding system, say windows-file-name, that works
> only for Windows.
Part of this discussion has occured off list, so you may not have seen 
my previous mail on this.

Currently Emacs uses the standard C library functions for file I/O on 
all platforms. In my judgement, changing this would be too much work to 
take on during feature-freeze, especially since it is complicated by the 
fact that the full Unicode API is not supported on all versions of Windows.

In future when this is implemented, I do not see the need for 
"windows-file-name" coding-system. In the versions of Windows where the 
Unicode API is fully supported, there is no need for 
file-name-coding-system, since it is known to be 
utf-16-le-with-signature. In the cases where those APIs are not 
supported, then file-name-coding-system should be used with the standard 
C library as now.