You wrote (in your message from Sat 22)
 > only cat does it well.
 > What can i do to make them work?

As other have pointed it, for less (and -current more), use :
setenv LESSCHARSET latin1
The 1.1 more is totally unable to display 8 bit characters (the 8th
bit is used as a flag internally).
The LC_CTYPE variable alone doesn't help in NetBSD.
 > What editor is able to edit these characters? vi and emacs
 > don't display them correct too. I dont have a german keymap.
 > I dont want it. Is there a way to input german chars with 
 > US Keymap? Now i am clipping them from other occurences.

I don't use vi for french accented text. Emacs 19 is fully capable of
displaying them and typing them.

To display latin-1 caracters, use (standard-display-european t) in
your .emacs. (require 'iso-syntax) is a good thing too (changes syntax
tables to recognize accented characters as part of words and teaches
emacs how to upper- or lowercase them.

To type them in with an US keyboard, there are several modes in the
emacs distribution :

iso-acc.el: type " u to get =FC
iso-insert.el: type C-x 8 " u to get =FC

I've written 'iso-latin-1.el' in which you type u " to get =FC. 

XEmacs also has these modes, plus 'x-compose.el' which  uses
the X11 Compose modifier (which you can bind to Right Control).



					Matthieu