> And here's an even crazier idea: Some sort of well-thought-out UCF format > (Unicode Code Format) that is like plain-text, but includes a standard > metadata header (typically hidden while editing) that can help sort all this > stuff out, and maybe other things as well. Obviously it would require > special support from compilers and editors, but if it was well-designed > (including discouragement of proprietary extensions - don't want a repeat of > HTML) then I think it would be worth trying to push.
Sounds complicated and error prone. I still have problems with notepad and his habit of killing utf-8 files and inserting bunch of ???? where all the nice chars were. Makes me want to kill somebody.
