Re: non-ASCII characters in Automake source files

Thanks for your suggestions.  I looked through them and
have the following thoughts.

> I use the following as first line in some text files:
> 
>                                Hey Emacs! -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

I'd rather not decorate each non-ASCII source file with a comment
about coding systems if I can avoid doing that.  I was hoping that
Emacs could detect whether such files are UTF-8 or Latin-1 (the two
main candidates in Automake), and would prefer UTF-8 when in doubt.
That way, I wouldn't have to modify any source file.

>   (modify-coding-system-alist 'file "\\.\\(d\\|lisp\\)\\'" 'utf-8)

Wouldn't this cause Emacs to use UTF-8 for each source file, even
files that are Latin-1?

> Among these, vim and kate qualify especially as "editors for
> developers".

I suppose I should look into them, though I worry that I already know
too many editors than is healthy for me....

I briefly looked through the GNU Emacs 21.3 manual and read the
source, and noticed that appending "(prefer-coding-system 'utf8)" to
my ~/.emacs seemed to be pretty close to what I was looking for.  You
didn't mention this option -- is there some reason it's inadvisable?