How to select the default coding system

[Mikael Djurfeldt]

Dear all,

I just got a question from a beginner Emacs user how to set the default
coding system.  For some reason, he didn't get utf-8 by default (which he
wanted).  He might have touched some setting which caused this.

Now, I'm myself an experienced Emacs user and once did have a complete
overview of Emacs functionality.  But the multi-lingual envorpnment, coding
systems etc is new to me.

Trying to find the answer to this users question, I realized that the
complexity is too large even for me (elisp programmer) to find an answer in
reasonable time.

I started out browsing options in the GUI, trying to find an option for the
default coding system.  I *did* find some coding system options under
"mule", but nothing which seemed to fit.

In the manual I found a function "prefer-coding-system", which I gather one
could place in .emacs.

Q: What is the natural way to specify the default coding system,
preferrably using the GUI (to facilitate things for this novel user).

Best regards,
Mikael D.