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.