language settings in emacs

[ray@nabuli.de]

Hi,

I run GNU Emacs 21.3.1. on Debian sarge.  How do I have to make emacs
show the correct letters, no matter if the encoding is latin-1,
latin-15 or even utf-8?  I try to switch to using mh-e so if this
issue is not solved I always see those nasty combinations of whatever
... :-)  I use an US-keyboard and my current .emacs setting,
concerning the encoding, is: 


-----snip-------

; ---- language-env DON'T MODIFY THIS LINE!
; $Id: emacs,v 1.4 1998/02/20 18:35:26 leutloff Exp leutloff $

;;--- support european keys ------------------------------- 
(set-input-mode  (car (current-input-mode))
		 (nth 1 (current-input-mode))
		 0)

; don't use non-ascii (i.e. german umlauts) as word delimiter
(if (>= emacs-major-version 21)
    (progn
      (set-language-environment "Latin-9")
      (setq selection-coding-system 'compound-text-with-extensions)
    )
    (if (>= emacs-major-version 20)
        (set-language-environment "Latin-1")
        (require 'iso-syntax)))
(require 'disp-table)

;;--- redefine some keys ----------------------------------
;(global-set-key [backspace] 'backward-delete-char-untabify)
; the following line should not break delete char during incremental
; search - has this other disadvantages?
(global-set-key "\177" 'backward-delete-char-untabify)
(global-set-key [delete] 'delete-char)
(global-set-key [home] 'beginning-of-line)
(global-set-key [end] 'end-of-line)
;(global-set-key [C-home] 'beginning-of-buffer)
;(global-set-key [C-end] 'end-of-buffer)
; entries needed by XEmacs:
(global-set-key [(control home)] 'beginning-of-buffer)
(global-set-key [(control end)] 'end-of-buffer)
;;--- Names for calendar command -------------------------
(defvar calendar-day-name-array
  ["Son" "Mon" "Die" "Mit" "Don" "Fre" "Sam"])
(defvar calendar-month-name-array
  ["Januar" "Februar" "März" "April" "Mai" "Juni" 
   "Juli" "August" "September" "Oktober" "November" "Dezember"])
; ---- language-env end DON'T MODIFY THIS LINE!

-----snap----------------------------------

ANY help is very much appreciated :-)

Thank you :-)

ray