how to replace the list item characters?

["Clemens Fischer" <ino-qc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

i have my characters set to latin-1, but pages show UTF characters for items
in unordered lists.  since yanking rendered pages elsewhere makes emacs ask
for the character set just for these characters, how can i change them back to
(example):

  * item-1
    + sub-item-1
      o sub-sub-item-3
  * item-2

etc.?  i know this has been emacs-w3m standard in the past.  i already tried
setting

      (setq w3m-symbol '("-+" " |" "--" " +" "-|" " |" "-+" ""
                        "--" " +" "--" ""   "-+" ""   ""   ""
                        "-+" " |" "--" " +" "-|" " |" "-+" ""
                        "--" " +" "--" ""   "-+" ""   ""   ""
                        " *" " +" " o" " #" " @" " -"
                        " =" " x" " %" " *" " o" " #"
                        " #"
                        "<=UpDn "))

but this only made *all* such symbols disappear!

regards,

  clemens