diff --git a/.zshenv b/.zshenv
index 1a0e3eb..c66e124 100644
--- a/.zshenv
+++ b/.zshenv
@@ -93,14 +93,6 @@ export MANPATH
 
 
 case "`uname -sr`" in
-HP-UX*09.*)
-	export LANG=${LANG:-american.iso88591}
-	export LC_COLLATE=${LC_COLLATE:-american.iso88591@nofold}
-	;;
-HP-UX*10.*)
-	export LANG=${LANG:-C.iso88591}
-        export TZ=MEZ-1MESZ
-	;;
 Linux*)
 	export LC_COLLATE=POSIX
 	if [ -z "$LANG" ]
@@ -132,9 +124,7 @@ case "$LANG" in
 	export NLS_LANG=american_america.WE8ISO8859P1
 	;;
 *.UTF-8)
-	#export LESSCHARSET=latin1
 	export NLS_LANG=american_america.UTF8
-	# export LC_TIME=de_AT.UTF-8
 	;;
 esac
 
diff --git a/.zshrc b/.zshrc
index ad67dc6..638a216 100644
--- a/.zshrc
+++ b/.zshrc
@@ -98,3 +98,28 @@ fi
 autoload -U compinit
 compinit
 
+utf=`locale -a | grep en_US.utf8`
+if [ -n "$utf" ]
+then
+    # this is a bit of a hack -
+    # locale -a advertises the locale as "en_US.utf8",
+    # but the glibc accepts both "en_US.utf8" and
+    # "en_US.UTF-8" and xterm recogizes only the latter.
+    # So we explicitely set the latter, even though that's
+    # not the canonical name and may break some day.
+    # 
+    LANG=en_US.UTF-8
+else 
+    # fall back to latin 1.
+    LANG=en_US.iso88591
+fi
+export LANG
+case "$LANG" in
+*.iso88591)
+	export LESSCHARSET=latin1
+	export NLS_LANG=american_america.WE8ISO8859P1
+	;;
+*.UTF-8)
+	export NLS_LANG=american_america.UTF8
+	;;
+esac