Macintosh character display (128-255)

[shamino@techie.com (David C.)]

I'm running Emacs 21.3.50, compiled for Macintosh OS X 10.3.

I have set up my system to display the mac-roman version of the
courier font for all frames, and to display all hi-page characters
as-is, since the font contains glyphs for them all.  The relevant
lines from my .emacs file are:

    (set-default-font
     "-apple-courier-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-mac-roman")

    (setq default-frame-alist
          (append
           '((width . 80)
             (height . 104)
             (font . "-apple-courier-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-mac-roman"))
           default-frame-alist))

    (standard-display-8bit 128 255)

Using this setup, I find that the hi-page characters still don't
display properly.  I get the hollow rectanlges (some extra-wide)
representing those characters in all newly-created buffers.  If I
load a file with these characters, however, they display OK.

As a test, I created a simple text file containing all 128 of the
hi-page characters.

If I load the buffer (C-x C-f <filename>), all of the hi-page
characters display correctly.

If instead, I create a new buffer (or simply switch to the scratch
buffer) and insert the contents of that same file (C-x i <filename>),
the even-numbered hi-page characters all display as boxes and the
odd-numbered hi-page characters all display as a capital "A" with an
umlaut over it.

I don't think this a frame-setting problem, because I see the problem
when both buffers are displayed in the same frame.

The "new buffer" behavior is also exhibited when reading messages
with Gnus.

If I comment off the font-changes from my .emacs file, I get the same
behavior as before, but with latin-1 characters displayed for loaded
files instead of mac-roman characters.

If I comment off the "standard-display-8bit" call, I see a variation
on the same behavior.  New buffers show all of the hi-page characters
as their octal equivalents, while loaded buffers show octal for the
range of 128-159 and Mac characters from 160-255.  Obviously, the part
of the Emacs library that processes the default (nil) standard display
table knows what the difference is between these buffers.
Unfortunately, I do not.

I checked what I think are all the obvious variables for the two buffers:

    buffer-file-coding-system is raw-text-unix for both buffers.

    buffer-display-table is nil for both buffers, meaning they are
    both using the same table (standard-display-table).

    buffer-file-format is nil for both buffers.

Could someone point me in the right direction.  Or even better,
suggest a change to my .emacs that will force newly-created buffers
to display the mac-roman encoding for all of the hi-page characters?

Thanks in advance.

-- David