Re: recoding a buffer coding system

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Santiago Mejia <mejia@uchicago.edu>
> Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 09:31:40 -0500
> 
> (switch-to-buffer (url-retrieve-synchronously 
> "http://www.wordreference.com/deen/grun";))
> 
> In the buffer *http www:wordreference.com:80* I see the character that
> firefox displays as "ü" (u with umlaut) as \303\274.

\303\274 is the UTF-8 representation of ü.  I'm guessing that the
buffer where it is displayed as \303\274 is a unibyte buffer.

> As I said, however, if I merely save and reopen the file, the characters
> get shown properly.

Does it help to say "M-: (set-buffer-multibyte t) RET"?