"It's really simple: Know what encoding a certain piece of text, that is, a certain byte sequence, is in, then interpret it with that encoding. That's all you need to do. If you're writing an app that allows the user to input some text, specify what encoding you accept from the user. For any sort of text field, the programmer can usually decide its encoding. For any sort of file a user may upload or import into a program, there needs to be a specification what encoding that file should be in. Alternatively, the user needs some way to tell the program what encoding the file is in. This information may be part of the file format itself, or it may be a selection the user has make (not that most users would usually know, unless they have read this article)."
http://kunststube.net/encoding/
This was a really good read and I...actually agree. Encoding isn't just a problem with data files, but also with development environments, or specifically IDEs like Eclipse. Unfortunately, just like English is not a universal language, neither is UTF-8. Let's know how we're speaking to each other to understand each other - even in the world of code.
Additional, check out Joel's article:
Cheers,
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