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I'm reading the Emacs manual in Info-mode. Some non-ascii characters render as octal escape sequences rather than glyphs. For example, node 23.2 Minor Modes contains the following text:

Electric Quote mode automatically converts quotation marks. For example, it requotes text typed `like this' to text ‘like this’.

When I view it in an info buffer, I see:

Electric Quote mode automatically converts quotation marks. For example, it requotes text typed `like this' to text \342\200\230like this\342\200\231.

If I select this text and write the region to a file, I can open that file and Emacs renders it correctly.

I'm running Emacs in a gui, but I've repro'd everything above in the terminal as well, and both with and without my init file.

What's causing this behavior, and how can I fix it so info buffers render correctly?

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    If you see this when starting Emacs using emacs -Q (no init file) then please consider reporting it as an Emacs bug: M-x report-emacs-bug. If you do not see it with virgin Emacs the recursively bisect your init file to find the culprit code.
    – Drew
    Oct 6, 2016 at 15:29
  • What emacs version are you on?
    – xuhdev
    Dec 6, 2016 at 9:58
  • Are you on OSX, and is your texinfo program 4.8? This sounds like bug#24637. The fix is to upgrade to 4.13 or higher.
    – npostavs
    Feb 3, 2017 at 14:13
  • @npostavs That is the right bug. I reported it :) . I would upgrade but it sounds like I'd have to force link it, and given how low impact it is, I'm more inclined to let it lay for now.
    – ivan
    Feb 3, 2017 at 21:26
  • Oh, that's why it seemed so familiar :) I'll add that as an answer for reference.
    – npostavs
    Feb 3, 2017 at 22:54

2 Answers 2

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This is Bug#24637, as explained there, the problem is due to a bug in old versions of Texinfo. It should be solved by upgrading to version 4.13 or higher.

I would upgrade but it sounds like I'd have to force link it

I don't exactly know what "force link" means, but you should be able to do ./configure MAKEINFO=/path/to/new/makeinfo when building emacs without having to override makeinfo in other contexts.

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Add this to your config file:

(prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
(set-default-coding-systems 'utf-8)
(set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8)
(set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8)
(setq default-buffer-file-coding-system 'utf-8)

Also, if you run emacs in tmux, add this to tmux config:

set -gq utf8
setw -gq utf8 on
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  • Still no luck. Though this changed the default coding system for new files from utf-8-unix to utf-8, running describe-coding in the Info buffer reports Coding system for saving this buffer: t -- raw-text-unix both before and after adding the above settings.
    – ivan
    Oct 6, 2016 at 12:47
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    Which font do you use? Does it support UTF-8?
    – Stepan S
    Oct 6, 2016 at 15:26
  • I use Avenir Next in Info buffers, and it supports utf-8, but I also repro'd this issue without any of my personal config, in which case Emacs is using Menlo. Menlo also supports utf-8
    – ivan
    Oct 7, 2016 at 12:23

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