Re: reading binary, non-unix file

[Mathias Dahl]

"Mickey Ferguson" <MFerguson@peinc.com> writes:

> 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.

I wont comment on -le and -be but I have noticed that "utf-16" also
works (at least I have it in my CVS Emacs). utf-16-le is what
Microsoft uses to encode Unicode data in files so that is the one you
want to use.

> 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.

I had the same problem and instead of searching the net or asking here
I just created a keyboard macro which I then named, put in my .emacs
and which I then bound a key to.

You start and stop a keyboard macro with C-x ( and C-x )
respectively. You can then name it with M-x name-last-kbd-macro <name>
and then insert it so that it acts as a function (sort of) in your
.emacs with M-x insert-kbd-macro <name>.

Hope this helps!

/Mathias