>> >> I see this: >> buffer-file-coding-system is a variable defined in `C source code'. >> Its value is iso-latin-1-dos > > See "M-: (coding-system-priority-list) RET". > > The highest-priority encoding is set from your locale, but look what > is the next one. > hello again. I think I'm starting to understand what is going on. I had created a long time ago an unibyte file containing the 1-byte characters I want to test within emacs. The file was created with a program on which I have total control byte-by-byte, so I know what is inside the file exactly. I have attached the file to this mail, not sure that this is allowed on the gnu-debug mailing list, but this is simple and very short .txt file, that reads as follows : (this mail itself is typeset and displayed here as iso-8859-1) ------- mytestchars-224-255-iso-8859.txt --------------------- 224 \340 à 225 \341 á 226 \342 â 227 \343 ã 228 \344 ä 229 \345 å 230 \346 æ 231 \347 ç 232 \350 è 233 \351 é 234 \352 ê 235 \353 ë 236 \354 ì 237 \355 í 238 \356 î 239 \357 ï 240 \360 ð 241 \361 ñ 242 \362 ò 243 \363 ó 244 \364 ô 245 \365 õ 246 \366 ö 247 \367 ÷ 248 \370 ø 249 \371 ù 250 \372 ú 251 \373 û 252 \374 ü 253 \375 ý 254 \376 þ 255 \377 ÿ éèçàù < test strings to see how they behave Éèçàù ---------------------------------------------------------- I started /usr/local/bin/emacs -Q mytestchars-224-255-iso-8859.txt under emacs 23.2.93.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) The file displays perfectly correctly. (describe-char (point)) gives me exactly what I want, i.e. an extended asci decimal code between 224 and 255. Almost all operations (except capitalize, see below) work exactly as I wish and exactly like in older emacs versions, no mystery since the priority list M-: (coding-system-priority-list) RET reads as : (iso-latin-1 utf-8 iso-2022-7bit iso-2022-7bit-lock iso-2022-8bit-ss2 emacs-mule raw-text iso-2022-jp in-is13194-devanagari chinese-iso-8bit utf-8-auto utf-8-with-signature ...) Again I'm perfectly happy since I see that iso-latin-1 comes first, but is this what I want ? certainly yes, my locale environment variables look like : LC_ALL=fr_FR.ISO8859-1 LC_COLLATE=fr_FR.ISO8859-1 LANG=fr_FR.ISO8859-1 GDM_LANG=fr_FR.iso88591 LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.ISO8859-1 XTERM_LOCALE=fr_FR.ISO8859-1 However, in this emacs -Q session, with a correct unibyte display of an unibyte file, *capitalize does not work*. At the beginning of this discussion, Sven explained that capitalize would only work on 2-byte characters. Which I tested of course, and of course it works, but I simply wish I could continue to capitalize M-c unibyte words like in the good old iso-8859 days !! Additional info : when applying the M-c command to a letter above decimal ascii 224, nothing happens on the display as reported, *although the buffer is marked as being changed.* Incidentally in a good ol' xterm window (fitted with gnu readline and obeying my LOCALE preferences as liste above), M-c works perfectly as it should, and if I cut-paste from the xterm to the emacs buffer, everything looks fine & unibyte ... except that I can no longer change the case of the pasted string with 'capitalize' or a similar 'case' command. Bug, or UTF-8 emacs 23.2 feature ? -- Emmanuel