> However, I think the question is wrong. The right one is,
> how many of the people on this list will use an editor which
> can generate a utf-8 encoded file _within 4 or 5 years_?

If you use an author friendly SGML document type with an encoding for
your own locale, you can configure SP to (1) accept that and then (2),
when you parse it for conversion to an xml version of the same
document type, get UTF-8 output.  The SGML document type could be made
to accept special segments of direct UTF-8 for non-local material.
(And the source can be made to look like LaTeX!  :-) )

                                     -- Bill