Re: utf8 char display in buffer

[B. T. Raven]

ken wrote:
> On 06/08/2009 04:43 PM B. T. Raven wrote:
> > ken wrote:
> > > Hey, group,
> > >
> > > I already use a few utf8 characters in emacs (and in web pages), but
> > > recently needed to use a couple more.  One is an 'a' with a horizontal
> > > line above it, the other an 'i' with a horizontal line above it.  How do I
> > > input these into a buffer?
> > >
> > >
> > > tia,
> > > ken
> > C-x ret C-\ latin-4-postfix
> >
> > then a,e,i,o,u followed by hyphen generate macroned vowels
> >
> > If you don't want all these then you could just put something like this
> > in .emacs
> >
> > (global-set-key "\C-ca" (lambda () (interactive) (insert  ?ā )))
> > (global-set-key "\C-ci" (lambda () (interactive) (insert  ?ī )))
> >
> > assuming you have these C-c combos free.
> >
> > Ed
>
> Fantastic!  But... when I save and close the buffer and then open it up
> again, in place of the beautiful and correct characters, there are
> little boxes.

After you see then correctly in the buffer do:

C-x ret c utf-8

then

C-x C-s

Now next time you load that file it should appear correctly.
ā  and ī are not in iso-8859-1 and so you must use a more comprehensive 
coding system.

> I tried using ‘C-x C-m c utf-8 RET’ prior to 'C-x C-f filename'... but
> no joy.  Same no-go with 'C-x C-m c mule-utf-8 RET'.
>
> The fact that these non-English characters display properly in the
> buffer initially tells me that I have the requisite fonts installed.  So
> what little connection is emacs not making (and how do I tell it to make
> that connection)?

If you use utf-8 a lot you can put ;; -*- coding: utf-8[;] -*- into the 
first line of the file. I don't know whether that sem in brackets is 
needed or not.

> Thanks, all.