Character styles

["Robert W. Kerns" <RWK@scrc-yukon.arpa>]

    Date: Wed, 25 Feb 87 18:47 EST
    From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@ALDERAAN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
    If you actually have a case in which a perfectly-OK file is written from
    7.0, and then it is read back into 7.0, and the codes are visible, then
    there is a bug, and it should be reported.  It doesn't sound like
    anything I've ever heard of.
I've seen similar reports.  What it has always turned out to
be is that there were non-NIL.NIL.NIL character styles.  Typically
what happens is that a user will have inserted text that 1looks0 the
same as NIL.NIL.NIL, but with some of those NIL's filled in from
whatever the default character-style he uses.  The "default default"
is FIX.ROMAN.NORMAL, so if you have text with NIL.ROMAN.NIL, it will
look the same as NIL.NIL.NIL so long as you don't change the default
style nil FIX.ITALIC.NORMAL.  But it will have to undergo encoding
to save it in the file.

We're investigating options to make it easier for the user to
avoid writing non NIL.NIL.NIL files accidentally, when you're
intending the file to be used on a foreign system.