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.