[gentoo-user] LANG, LC_*, and unicode

I installed a package which nattered at me:

    elog messages for the following packages generated by process 22063 on host df.crowfix.com:
    - app-dicts/aspell-fo-0.51.0

    >>> Messages generated for package app-dicts/aspell-fo-0.51.0 by process 22063 on 20110105-150049 PST:

    ERROR: install
    This package installs one or more file names containing characters that
    do not match your current locale settings. The current setting for
    filesystem encoding is 'ANSI_X3.4-1968'.

    	usr/lib64/aspell-0.60/f\ufffdroyskt.alias

    For best results, UTF-8 encoding is recommended. See the Gentoo Linux
    Localization Guide for instructions about how to configure your locale
    for UTF-8 encoding:

    	http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/guide-localization.xml

Now being the simple old fashioned sort, I never set up locale on my
machine, so neither LANG nor any LC_* are set.  But it does occur to
me that I ought to get with the times, especially if I like to install
odd language packs just to run spell check in different languages once
in a while for spits and dribbles.

I tried

    ls /usr/lib64/aspell-0.60/f*

and

    LANG=en_US.UTF-8 ls /usr/lib64/aspell-0.60/f*

and the only difference was whether "f\ufffdroyskt.alias" was first or
last in the listing.  It still displayed the unicode char as "\ufffd".

So supposing I set LANG=en_US.UTF-8 and do nothing else.  Will it
simply change how "unusual" file names are displayed, will it change
how future file names are created, will it affect any text files I now
have, or ones I create from now on?

In other words, will it mess up what I have?

-- 
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     Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman & rocket surgeon / felix@×××××××.com
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