Frank Mittelbach writes:
> Roozbeh,
>
> > I have yet to
> > > see that UTF8 text (without taking precaution and externally
> > > announcing that a file is in UTF8) is really properly handled
> > > by any OS platform. Is it?
> >
> > Windows 2000 autodetects them. I can't define the proper
> > handling in Linux well; you mean in a text editor?
>
> no i mean at the system level. what do you mean by windows2000
> autodetects them? my understanding of what UTF8 means as a format
> is that you can't autodetect it. As best you can detect that
> something is not UTF8, but how do you want to detect it as being in
> that format and not in, say, a file written with an 8bit
> inputencoding which happens to just contain an 8bit stream which is
> by chance also conforming to the UTF8 spec?
MS applications prepend a "signature" to UTF8 files. It's not really
in the specs, just a MS thing.
--M.