how to save oe other than utf8

[Andreas Roehler]

David Kastrup wrote:
> Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> writes:
> 
>>    >> 
>>    >> That works, but the 15 coding gives me 
>>    >> ½  
>>
>>    > You saved it correctly. Probably opening again chose iso-8859-1 
>>    > instead of iso-8859-15. If you read "Noconv" in your modeline, 
>>    > that's the case. If there is "MIME/Ltn-9", then you have a real 
>>    > problem.
>>
>>    > You might want to add
>>
>>    > % Local Variables:
>>    > % buffer-file-coding-system: iso-8859-15
>>    > % End:
>>
>> BTW GNU emacs 23 is not better using this coding and reopening the file
>> shows me ½!
> 
> It is not possible to distinguish Latin-1 from Latin-9 without an
> appropriate coding cookie or other hint separately from just the encoded
> file.
> 
> XEmacs can't do magic, neither can GNU Emacs. 

Hi David,

interesting point. What about to teach them?
Seems worthwhile the effort.

Is magic still the tool of choice in that kind of matters?
Do you know alternatives?

Thanks

Andreas Röhler