Configuring XEmacs for UTF-8

First, you need to have built xemacs itself with USE=mule. Then, the app-xemacs/mule-ucs package is needed. To autoload Unicode support, you can add the following to your ~/.xemacs/init.el:

    (require 'un-define)

If automatic character set detection on files is not working properly, here are three commands that can help.

• set-buffer-file-coding-system (C-x RET f) changes the coding system for the current file.
• set-default-buffer-file-coding-system (C-x RET F) sets the default for unsaved buffers and ASCII-looking files that have no obvious character set markers for autodetection.
• universal-coding-system-argument (C-x RET c) lets you set the coding system for the next command, so issuing this from a dired window immediately before opening a problematic file is a tactic that can be of use when autodetection gets things pathologically wrong.

The current coding system will be displayed near the left edge of the status line.