Re: problems displaying german "umlaute"

[Rainer Stengele]

TomSW schrieb:
> On Jul 4, 11:14 pm, Rainer Stengele <rainer.steng...@online.de> wrote:
> 
>> OK, opening the file after "emacs -Q" gives me:
>>
>> [Ps 90:12  Lehre uns bedenken, da\303\237 wir sterben m\303\274ssen, auf
>> da\303\237 wir klug werden.]
>>
>> After evaluating (set-buffer-multibyte t) and reloading the buffer the
>> result is wrong still...
> 
> It looks as if Emacs is reading utf-8 files as ascii, I don't know
> why. After loading the file, try the command describe-coding-system,
> just to confirm what coding system is being used.
> 
> To fix the problem you can change file-coding-system-alist, or use set-
> default-coding-systems, somewhere in your .emacs. Just seems odd that
> it is necessary.
> regards,
> Tom
> 
> 
Oh dear,  I am totally desperate.
The bad characters are coming up all the times and getting more and more.
No matter which coding system I use they reappear.

What am I doing wrong?
Can anybody help me setting up a correct coding system framework to work with 
german umlauts?

I tried to write a function to replace the characters but it does not work, 
something like:

(defun replace-misthaufen ()
  "ersetzt im gesamten buffer:
ü => ü
ß => ß
ä => ä
ö => ö"
  (interactive
   (beginning-of-buffer)
   (while (search-forward "ü" nil t)
     (replace-match "ü" nil t))
   (beginning-of-buffer)
   (while (search-forward "ß" nil t)
     (replace-match "ß" nil t))
   (beginning-of-buffer)
   (while (search-forward "ä" nil t)
     (replace-match "ä" nil t))
   (beginning-of-buffer)
   (while (search-forward "ö" nil t)
     (replace-match "ö" nil t))
   ))


Looks crazy I know, but the reason is that even in this buffer everything comes 
up wrong so I do not know how to continue.

Thanks for any help,

- rainer