Spacing within org-mode tables when diacritics are used

[Leo Vivier <leo.vivier@gmail.com>]

Hi everyone,

I'm quite excited because it is the first time that I get to ask a 
question on a mailing list!
I've been wandering between this list, the wikis, and SE to get my 
answers so far, but the problem I've encountered now wasn't addressed in 
any of these.
Please tell me if the format of the email is not up to standard, and 
sorry for the inconvenience if this is the case.

My problems concerns the spacing within org-mode tables when diacritics 
(e.g. accented letters) are used.

Here's a MWE with emacs -q.

| 1 | test  | test |
| 2 | tést | test |
| 3 | test  | test |
| 4 | test  | test |

The 2nd line (with the `é') as an offset of 1 space compared to the others.
Pressing <tab> within any of the cells to realign the table doesn't fix it.

I think this might have something to do with multibyte characters.
Running (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters) shows that the é does 
indeed take two bytes.
Setting the language environment to French via (set-language-environment 
'french) solves this issue (i.e. pressing <tab> realigns the table 
properly), but this only last whilst the file remains opened.

Would you have an idea on how to fix this?

Thanks for the help.


-- 
Leo Vivier
English Studies & General Linguistics
Language Assistant, French Department
Reed College