OSX terminal, system-wide Chinese input methods

[Eric Abrahamsen <girzel@gmail.com>]

Hi there,

I'm having a Unicode-related problem which is particularly annoying  
for being mysterious and only occasional. I use Emacs via Mac OSXs  
terminal app. I do Chinese text entry using the QIM input method,  
which is system-wide, under the input methods menu. MOST of the time,  
Chinese input works correctly in Emacs, while sometimes it comes out  
garbled. Pasting Chinese text into those buffers also result in  
garbled text. Buffers sometimes start out garbled, but after I fiddle  
around for a while, Chinese input suddenly works (it's never gone in  
the other direction). I'm never really sure what I've done to get it  
working, but it seems that newly-created buffers have this problem  
more, while opening files that already have Chinese text in them never  
causes problems. I use QIM for all programs and don't want to use the  
Emacs-native input methods. This is my Emacs version:

GNU Emacs 22.3.1 (powerpc-apple-darwin9.4.0, Carbon Version 1.6.0)

And I've got the following in my .emacs file:

(set-language-environment 'UTF-8)

I also tend to use the TeX input method when editing text-based files.

I ran describe-coding-environment on two different buffers, the first  
where Chinese input wasn't working, the second on a buffer where it  
was. There's hardly any difference between the two, but I also noticed  
that, after doing this, Chinese input HAD started working in the first  
buffer, so maybe this is already meaningless. You can see my  
confusion...

Thanks in advance for any hints,

Eric


Originally NOT working:

Coding system for saving this buffer:
   u -- mule-utf-8 (alias: utf-8)

Default coding system (for new files):
   u -- mule-utf-8 (alias: utf-8)

Coding system for keyboard input:
   u -- utf-8 (alias of mule-utf-8)

Coding system for terminal output:
   u -- utf-8 (alias of mule-utf-8)


Working from the start:

Coding system for saving this buffer:
   u -- mule-utf-8-unix

Default coding system (for new files):
   u -- mule-utf-8 (alias: utf-8)

Coding system for keyboard input:
   u -- utf-8 (alias of mule-utf-8)

Coding system for terminal output:
   u -- utf-8 (alias of mule-utf-8)