UTF8 string storage and retrieval in XML

[Richard Shann]

Can anyone explain what is going on when you try to store strings with
non-ASCII characters? Here is an example:

guile> (define another-data "Čć")           
guile> another-data
"�\x8c�\x87"
guile> (display another-data)
Čćguile> 

I would expect evaluating another-data to give "Čć" not 
"�\x8c�\x87" (what is that?)...

My problem comes with storing an association list with the second
element a string with a non-ASCII character in it. I'm storing the alist
as a string with

(format #f "'~s" myalist)

but when I try to store this string on disk using XML it barfs on
reloading.

Richard Shann