Re: reading binary, non-unix file

[Kevin Rodgers]

[Please don't top-post.]

Mickey Ferguson wrote:
> We're almost there.  I don't have a single UTF-16 coding choice.  When I
> tried what you provided, I saw:
>
> Possible completions are:
> utf-16-be                          utf-16-be-dos
> utf-16-be-mac                      utf-16-be-unix
> utf-16-le                          utf-16-le-dos
> utf-16-le-mac                      utf-16-le-unix
>
> I chose utf-16-le and it seemed to do it properly.  I just don't know if
> that was the right choice - I don't fully understand what each of these
> provides.

LE = Little Endian and BE = Big Endian.  Emacs should provide an
encoding in which the endianness is determined from the BOM, but since
it doesn't, utf-16-le is right for x86 processors.  See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-16

> Second, after I determine which one of the above to use, can anyone 
help me
> to write a function so that I can then map a key combination (similar 
to C-X
> C-F uses Find-File), that will load in the proper coding and then 
find the
> file?  I'm lisp-impaired, so any help would be appreciated.  I'm 
capable of
> taking an interactive function that's been defined and mapping it to a
> keystroke, but that's about it.

What's wrong with `C-x RET c utf-16-le RET C-x C-f' :-)

If all the files are UTF-16 on your system, perhaps you can just put
this in your .emacs file:

(setq-default buffer-file-coding-system 'utf-16-le)

--
Kevin Rodgers