Re: automating language environment settings

[Matthias Meulien <meulien@club.lemonde.fr>]

> From time to time, I'm using emacs to edit documents written using ISO
> 8859-2 charset. Thus, I have first to set language environment to
> "Latin-2", then to open text file and finally to select "latin-2-prefix"
> as input method. 

You can activate the "latin-2-prefix" input method automatically when
changing of language environment with the following hooks; it also sets
the default input method for the latin-1 language environment:

(add-hook 'set-language-environment-hook
	    '(lambda ()
	       (let ((lang current-language-environment))
		 (cond ((equal lang "Latin-2")
			(set-terminal-coding-system 'latin-2)
                        (activate-input-method "latin-2-prefix"))
		       ((equal lang "Latin-1")
			(set-terminal-coding-system 'latin-1)
                        (setq default-input-method "french-prefix"))))))

(add-hook 'exit-language-environment-hook
	    '(lambda ()
	       (set-terminal-coding-system nil)))

Note that the terminal settings are useful when you work on a character terminal.

> So I was thinking about automating above process by creating
> corresponding emacs mode and then to reference this mode from first
> line of related documents; if everything setup properly, emacs
> should be able to apply all necessary settings upon opening
> document. (...)

Read about local variables in the info manual. 

Don't you think that the `C-x RET l' key sequence is enough?
-- 
Matthias