Re: 23.0.60; Defaut encoding for XML files should be undefined (instead of utf-8)

[Miles Bader]

Jason Rumney <address@hidden> writes:
>> However it doesn't look like the current Emacs mechanism for
>> format-specific coding systems (`auto-coding-functions') explicitly
>> supports functionality.  Maybe sgml-xml-auto-coding-function could use
>> whatever lower-level function does coding-system-detection using only
>> the characters in the buffer (I can't seem to find it, but there must be
>> such a thing...).
>
> file-coding-system-alist would be the place where I'd expect to see it
> used, but there utf-8 is hard-coded for xml files.

In any case, it would seem nice to support "prefer this (or these)
coding system(s)" in addition to "always use this coding system".

Currently the doc for file-coding-system-alist says: 

   ...
   If VAL is a cons of coding systems, the car part is used for decoding,
   and the cdr part is used for encoding.
   ...

Maybe this could be extended to something like:

   ...
   If VAL is a cons of coding systems, the car part is used for decoding,
   and the cdr part is used for encoding.  The cdr may be a symbol, in
   which case it is always used, or a list of coding systems, which are
   added to the front of the list used by the normal coding-system
   detection mechanism, as if by `prefer-coding-system'.
   ...

?

-Miles

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