BTW: If you are interested in an automatic detection of the given encoding in LaTeX, give
\usepackage{selinput} \SelectInputMappings{adieresis={ä},germandbls={ß}} a try. Axel At 11:42 10.01.2008 +0100, Rainer Dorsch wrote:
Norbert, thanks for the explanation. What surprises me somewhat is that I do not use any other program which I have to tell the character encoding explicitly on my lenny system. E.g. emacs/kate etc. knew the character encoding by itself and displayed umlauts right away. It seems that they have at least sensible defaults. Do you know, how they figure them out? Thanks, Rainer