Re: Russian letters

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Paul Pogonyshev <pogonyshev@gmx.net>
> Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2006 00:48:15 +0300
> 
> $ emacs -Q
> M-x customize-variable RET utf-fragment-on-decoding RET
> [set to t, set for current session]
> C-x C-f test.text RET
> 
> Now, the characters from the file are decoded into `cyrillic-iso8859-5',
> while new, typed characters are in `mule-unicode-0100-24ff'.

This is exactly what is expected.  Here's the doc string of
utf-fragment-on-decoding:

    utf-fragment-on-decoding's value is nil

    Whether or not to decode some chars in UTF-8/16 text into iso8859 charsets.
    Setting this means that the relevant Cyrillic and Greek characters are
    decoded into the iso8859 charsets rather than into
    mule-unicode-0100-24ff.  The iso8859 charsets take half as much space
    in the buffer, but using them may affect how the buffer can be re-encoded
    and may require a different input method to search for them, for instance.
    See `unify-8859-on-decoding-mode' and `unify-8859-on-encoding-mode'
    for mechanisms to make this largely transparent.

The reason why the default value is nil is precisely that most users
will not want the fragmentation, they will want the characters to
belong to a single character set.

Did you set this variable to a non-nil value in your .emacs?  If so,
how about removing that customization?  If the reason is that you
don't have Unicode fonts installed, I think installing them is a
better solution.