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?

frank