Problem with gtk+-1 Applications in gnome 2-6

[Ingo Krabbe <i krabbe dokom net>]

Since I recently installed a gnome 2.6 via gentoo 'emerge -u' I  
encounter problems using gtk+-1 Applications like sylpheed and  
GnomeCard, which use iso-8859-15 or iso-8859-1 encoding and seem to be  
unable to use UTF-8 or know don't recognize UTF-8 !

I tried to set gnome to use iso-8859-15 instead but it seems that the  
system encoding is set to utf-8.  I cannot find the environment setting  
or the configuration file to change this.

This problem is quite annyoing since I currently cannot use sylpheed  
claws with my defined e-mail filters.  All localized messages for  
system commands exectued by the shell seem to display in iso8859 too,  
but I have to switch the gnome terminal by hand each time I want to see  
that characters displayed in the right way.

Finally I cannot imagine what has happened and help is very welcome.

BYE INGO