Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> writes:
>ulrich@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Ulrich Neumerkel) writes:
>
>> To me this seems to be some kind of boot strap problem: In order to
>> mention ä one needs to be in a Latin-1 language environment etc.
>
>Well, C-x 8 " a seems easy enough to type if you need that character.

This is not about typing in other characters but referring
to them in .el-Files

>Since ä is a Latin-1 character, what's the point of making this "key"
>available to non-Latin-1 users?
This is more about particular keyboard layouts.

>;; -*- coding: latin-1; -*-
>(global-set-key (kbd "C-ä") 'dabbrev-expand)
>
>Does this work?

Yes, this is definitely better than what I had before,
but it is not what my post was about.
If latin-1 would be everything, then this would be perfect.

If I understand the situation correctly you need for any encoding
you care a separate file to define the appropriate bindings.
Right? The point would be to be able to refer to different
encodings in the same file.

-- 
Ulrich Neumerkel http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/ulrich/