utf8 and unicode characters

[Robert V. Baron]

Symptoms:

First, let me state what I have is a request for information.  I want to
use emacs to read/write utf8 files.  The files were generated by translating
chinese big5 files into utf8.  When I drop the files into emacs, all I
see is "y" with accent characters for each unicode character, I can mouse
over and emacs will show the character number.  I can go on and tell you
the result of some experiments I tried, but first let me ask what is
the right way to view these characters.


In GNU Emacs 21.3.50.1 (i386-msvc-nt5.0.2195)
 of 2004-03-13 on T22-RVB
configured using `configure --with-msvc (13.10)'

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: ENU
  locale-coding-system: iso-latin-1
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Summary

Minor modes in effect:
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  unify-8859-on-encoding-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t

Recent input:
<return> C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-n C-n C-p C-p C-f C-f C-f C-f C-f C-f C-f 
C-f C-f C-f C-f C-f C-f C-f <escape> d e m a c s <escape> 
d - p r e t e s t C-a C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n <escape> > C-c C-c C-p f C-x C-g C-x k <return> 
<escape> x C-g C-n SPC <escape> x e m a <backspace> 
<backspace> <backspace> r e p o r t - e m a c s - b 
u g <return>

Recent messages:
Invalid face text property value: custom-face-cyan-default-default-t-nil-nil
Invalid face text property value: custom-face-light 
blue-default-default-t-t-nil [2 times]
Invalid face text property value: custom-face-cyan-default-default-t-nil-nil
Invalid face text property value: custom-face-pink-default-default-t-t-nil
Invalid face text property value: custom-face-cyan-default-default-t-nil-nil
Invalid face text property value: 
custom-face-forestgreen-default-default-nil-t-nil [3 times]
Invalid face text property value: custom-face-cyan-default-default-t-nil-nil
Invalid face text property value: 
custom-face-forestgreen-default-default-nil-t-nil [2 times]
Invalid face text property value: custom-face-cyan-default-default-t-nil-nil [2 
times]
Invalid face text property value: 
custom-face-forestgreen-default-default-nil-t-nil [3 times]