File encoding, ISO-8859-1 versus UTF-8, was: Error in xmaxima for Spanish language

On Mon, Aug 17, 2026 at 4:57 PM T Rex <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> (%i1) plot2d(sin(x), [x, -%pi, %pi], [plot_format,xmaxima ]);
> Error in startup script: couldn't read file "/app/plugins/maxima/share/maxima/5.50.0/xmaxima/msgs/es.msg": invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character

I'm pretty sure that the problem is that es.msg contains text encoded
in ISO-8859-1 and Xmaxima is expecting UTF-8, as the latter is the
default for many, but maybe not all systems.

A workaround is to launch Xmaxima and tell it to expect a different
character encoding. Try this:

  $ LC_CTYPE=es.ISO-8859-1 xmaxima

at the command prompt. Does that help? If it doesn't make the problem
go away, maybe someone else can suggest something.

The bigger issue that I can see is that there are a number of files in
Maxima, some of them related to Xmaxima and some to other things,
which are ISO-8859-1 encoded. What should we do with those? It is a
trivial process to convert them to UTF-8, but will that cause trouble
for people using those files on non-UTF-8-default systems? In
particular, is Windows happier with ISO-8859-1 than UTF-8?

Thanks for any insights.

best,

Robert

PS. Here are the files that I can find that are ISO-8859-1 encoded.
Everything else appears to be ASCII, UTF-8, non-text data, or a
designated test file for some encoding.

./changelogs/ChangeLog: ISO-8859 text
./doc/intromax/intromax.html: HTML document, ISO-8859 text, with very long lines
./doc/tutorial/es/max.tex: LaTeX 2e document, ISO-8859 text, with very
long lines, with CRLF line terminators
./doc/tutorial/pt/LEIAME: ISO-8859 text
./doc/tutorial/pt/max.tex: LaTeX 2e document, ISO-8859 text, with very
long lines
./doc/tutorial/pt/minimal-maxima.tex: LaTeX 2e document, ISO-8859 text
./doc/tutorial/ru/minimal-maxima.tex: LaTeX 2e document, ISO-8859 text
./interfaces/emacs/imaxima/README: Lisp/Scheme program, ISO-8859 text
./interfaces/xmaxima/msgs/es.msg: ISO-8859 text, with very long lines
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/InfoBefore_de.txt: ISO-8859 text, with
CRLF, LF line terminators
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/InfoBefore_es.txt: ISO-8859 text, with CRLF
line terminators
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/InfoBefore_fr.txt: ISO-8859 text, with
CRLF, LF line terminators
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/InfoBefore_pt_BR.txt: ISO-8859 text, with
CRLF line terminators
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/InfoBefore_pt.txt: ISO-8859 text, with CRLF
line terminators
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/InfoBefore_ru.txt: ISO-8859 text, with CRLF
line terminators
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/readme_de.txt: ISO-8859 text, with CRLF
line terminators
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/readme_es.txt: ISO-8859 text, with CRLF
line terminators
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/readme_fr.txt: ISO-8859 text, with CRLF
line terminators
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/readme_it.txt: ISO-8859 text, with CRLF
line terminators
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/readme_pt_BR.txt: ISO-8859 text, with CRLF
line terminators
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/readme_pt.txt: ISO-8859 text, with CRLF
line terminators
./interfaces/xmaxima/win32/readme_ru.txt: ISO-8859 text, with CRLF
line terminators
./maxima.iss.in: ISO-8859 text
./maxima.iss: ISO-8859 text
./share/algebra/charsets/wsolve: ISO-8859 text, with CRLF line terminators
./share/diff_form/example.txt: ISO-8859 text
./share/diff_form/surface_example.txt: ISO-8859 text
./share/translators/m2mj/M2M.java: C source, ISO-8859 text
./share/translators/m2mj/Macsyma.stg: ISO-8859 text
./share/translators/m2mj/mapleLexer.g4: ISO-8859 text
./share/translators/m2mj/mapleParser.g4: ISO-8859 text
./share/translators/m2mj/mapleParserVisitorImpl.java: ISO-8859 text
./share/translators/m2mj/readme: ISO-8859 text
./share/translators/m2mj/Templates.java: ISO-8859 text
./src/rmaxima.in: ISO-8859 text
./src/rmaxima: POSIX shell script, ISO-8859 text executable


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