An appropriate :coding-system when starting the server would probably help. E.g.: (swank:create-server :port 4007 :style :spawn :dont-close t :coding-system "utf-8-unix")
using utf-8 as default in 2011 would have spared numerous people a whole lot of time.
instead we keep on repeating such threads to... why exactly?
my take on this is sitting in our branch for ages:
http://dwim.hu/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=slime;a=commit;h=851c7f1778e2927e4c4a8b7a...
or if meanwhile the link gets broken by rebasing, then look up this patch:
More sensible defaults:
- slime-setup loads slime-fancy if called without arguments - use utf-8 encoding by default