How do I get emacs to display accented characters?

How do I get emacs to display accented characters?

[Jay F. Shachter]

I am using Emacs version 21.2.2, which I believe is the current version,
or close to it.

I am certain that this is a frequently-asked question, and I apologize
for asking it of you, but I have read the FAQ document, I have done
everything the info files instruct me to do, as far as I can figure out,
and I am still failing to get emacs to display accented characters.

When I use XEmacs, I have no problem.  When the buffer contains, e.g.,
"Rick's Café Américain", XEmacs displays "Rick's Café Américain".
Emacs, on the other hand, displays "Rick's Cafe Americain".  Unless
I do (load-library "iso-ascii"), in which case it displays "Rick's
Caf{'e} Am{'e}ricain".  Nothing I do has succeeding in getting Emacs
to display "Rick's Café Américain" like XEmacs does.

These are the things that I have done, which have had no effect:
 (set-terminal-coding-system 'iso-latin-1-unix)
 (setq unibyte-display-via-language-environment t)
 (set-language-environment 'Latin-1)

Surely there is something simple that I am failing to do.  I cannot
figure out what it is.  Your replies will be much appreciated.  I thank
you all in advance for your help.

                   Jay Shachter
                   jay@m5.chi.il.us

Re: How do I get emacs to display accented characters?

[Eli Zaretskii]

On 1 Dec 2002, Jay F. Shachter wrote:

> When I use XEmacs, I have no problem.  When the buffer contains, e.g.,
> "Rick's Café Américain", XEmacs displays "Rick's Café Américain".
> Emacs, on the other hand, displays "Rick's Cafe Americain".  Unless
> I do (load-library "iso-ascii"), in which case it displays "Rick's
> Caf{'e} Am{'e}ricain".  Nothing I do has succeeding in getting Emacs
> to display "Rick's Café Américain" like XEmacs does.

Try running Emacs with "emacs -q --no-site-file".  If that solves the 
problems you have, there's something in your .emacs or in the site-wide 
startup files which does the damage.

> These are the things that I have done, which have had no effect:
>  (set-terminal-coding-system 'iso-latin-1-unix)
>  (setq unibyte-display-via-language-environment t)
>  (set-language-environment 'Latin-1)

There's probably more customizations in your .emacs that produce the 
adverse effect.  Something that makes your sessions unibyte, perhaps?

Re: How do I get emacs to display accented characters?

[Kai Großjohann]

jay@m5.chi.il.us (Jay F. Shachter) writes:

> When I use XEmacs, I have no problem.  When the buffer contains, e.g.,
> "Rick's Café Américain", XEmacs displays "Rick's Café Américain".
> Emacs, on the other hand, displays "Rick's Cafe Americain".  Unless
> I do (load-library "iso-ascii"), in which case it displays "Rick's
> Caf{'e} Am{'e}ricain".  Nothing I do has succeeding in getting Emacs
> to display "Rick's Café Américain" like XEmacs does.
>
> These are the things that I have done, which have had no effect:
>  (set-terminal-coding-system 'iso-latin-1-unix)
>  (setq unibyte-display-via-language-environment t)
>  (set-language-environment 'Latin-1)

Are you loading latin1-disp, perhaps?

Hm.  Strange.  Are you running in a terminal or under X11?

-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)

Re: How do I get emacs to display accented characters?

[John Wiegley]

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>>>>> On Sun Dec  1, Jay writes:

> When I use XEmacs, I have no problem.  When the buffer contains,
> e.g., "Rick's Café Américain", XEmacs displays "Rick's
> Café Américain".  Emacs, on the other hand, displays "Rick's
> Cafe Americain".  Unless I do (load-library "iso-ascii"), in which
> case it displays "Rick's Caf{'e} Am{'e}ricain".  Nothing I do has
> succeeding in getting Emacs to display "Rick's Café
> Américain" like XEmacs does.

> These are the things that I have done, which have had no effect:
> (set-terminal-coding-system 'iso-latin-1-unix) (setq
> unibyte-display-via-language-environment t)
> (set-language-environment 'Latin-1)

Usually this sort of thing happens if there is *even one* character
that is not part of the latin-1 encoding.  For example, it happens to
me when saving certain web pages that use \240 as a space character.
Once I replace these extraneous codes, then when I visit the buffer
the accents are automatically displayed.  You shouldn't have to
change any of the buffer local variables.

John