Character Sets and Encoding

Here are a number of reasons utf-8 will be the official character set of each locale:

• Character sets and collations are complicated topics. We aim to simplify the problem by using a standard.
• utf-8 is universal in what it covers, understands, and supports.
• You can combine multiple languages on one page easily. This will be useful when creating locale menus.
• utf-8 makes it easier to interact with external systems such as file editors and databases. Also, languages like JavaScript and Perl can easily work with utf-8 data.

It is possible for a locale to be something else; however, there is no reason for it to be anything other than utf-8 so we will not document how to use a different character set. If you feel you have a valid reason for using another character set, we would be happy to consider it. However, you must be able to explain in great technical detail why utf-8 is not an option and why using a different character set is the only viable solution.

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