Is it normal? Of course I am missing something... but what?
Thanks,
Luigi
IMO:
You must always consider that there are two encodings involved:
Encoding that TheIDE uses to edit the file (that is in defined in Project menu).
Encoding that your code things the file is in. (This is set by SetDefaultCharset mainly).
If there is no match, you can see those weird things
Also, if you switch the encoding for some file, TheIDE does not reencode it. That is why you see weird things after switching to utf-8 - the file that is NOT in utf8 gets displayed as if it was...
But you can still convert the file to another encoding, using Project/Convert to encoding.