Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

>> It's broken in your message, but seems to work fine when I send it:
>>
>> Горбачев
>
> I still see empty boxes, but perhaps Emacs is simply unable to select
> a proper font (I do have all debian fonts installed though).  The
> only thing in my configuration I can think of is that I run Emacs in an
> UTF-8 locale.

I see empty boxes in my emacs as well, but when I copy it as utf-8
into a file and display it in Mozilla, I see "Gorbachev".

This is perhaps why: In Emacs' international/fontset.el is a map from
charset names to font registries. Emacs uses 'mule-unicode-0100-24ff'
to describe the cyrillic characters above. The corresponding entry in
fontset.el shows, that emacs will try an *-ISO10646-1 font for them.

Since I use -Adobe-Courier-Medium-R-Normal--12-120-75-75-M-70-* as
default font, and there exists a -ISO10646-1 variant, it will use this
one. Unfortunately, the required positions within the font are empty,
therefore the empty boxes.

If I chose another font, "standard: 16-dot medium", from Emacs' font
menu, no empty boxes but cyrillic characters are visible!

Since this "16-dot medium" font (which is "-sony-fixed-medium...") is
not available for Registry -ISO10646-1 in Debian, Emacs tries another
font -- I don't know by what rule --, that is
  -Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--15-140-75-75-C-90-ISO10646-1, and this
one contains these cyrillic glyphs.


-- 
Michael