Re: utf-16le vs utf-16-le

[Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org>]

> Absolutely. I do agree on all this -- it was the stark contrast of not
> using BOM sometimes in utf-16 to using BOM in UTF-8 what caused ummm...
> some emotions ;-)
>
>> A BOM in UTF-8 is another matter, of course...
>
> Both things taken together make the work of art.

I have nothing to say about why Windows adds BOM to UTF-8 files,
but Emacs once saved me much time of debugging the problem when
mobile terminals failed to display files stored by the users of
Windows Notepad that adds BOM to UTF-8 files.  In earlier versions
of Emacs (I don't remember in which exactly), Emacs displayed the BOM
character at the beginning of the buffer, so it was easy to see where
the problem was.

Unfortunately, now in Emacs 23 I see no BOM marks displayed at the
beginning of the buffer.  I think Emacs should have a visual indication
for such hidden characters.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/