Hi Branden, On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 at 13:07, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 7/26/20 8:23 AM, Mike Frysinger wrote: > > > From: Mike Frysinger <vapier@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > > > > > > This header is used inconsistently -- man pages are UTF-8 encoded > > > but not setting this marker. It's only respected by the man-db > > > package, and seems a bit anachronistic at this point when UTF-8 > > > is the standard default nowadays. > > > > Thanks. Patch applied. > > Sorry I missed Mike's original mail, but there is _something_ else > besides man-db that respects this "coding: utf-8" thing. > > It's the editor that some people might use to maintain the man pages: > GNU Emacs[1]. > > That said, UTF-8 is an easy encoding to detect, the Unix standard of > many years now as you note, and for about that long Emacs has also > scanned the ends of files for file variables as well (in a more > expressive and powerful format), so they don't need to be packed in at > the beginning. > > Also, it's no skin off me personally because I use Vim. :P Thanks for (once again) dropping in with some helpful information. Still, I think it's right to apply the patch (and I don't think you object), since, as Mike notes, the tag is used quite inconsistently, and so it seems like no software really cares about this. And ever since the day I accidentally opened a PDF with emacs, and found that it actually worked, I've decided there's nothing emacs can't do :-). Cheers, Michael -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
