clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> As an alternative, forget UTF-8 and go for UTF-16.

  UTF-16 is more compact if the text consists mostly of non-ascii
characters, especially if it contains eg. kanji symbols, hiragana, etc.
(The vast majority of Japanese kanji can be expressed with 2 bytes using
UTF-16 but require 3 bytes with UTF-8.)

  However, if the text consists mostly of ascii characters, such as
English usually does, then UTF-8 is more compact than UTF-16 (which will
basically double the size of the file).

  Support for UTF-16 is still relatively poor (although getting better).
Most modern browsers should handle it ok, though, but it requires for the
server to send the proper http header to tell the browser the encoding,
and configuring the server to do this might not be trivial. (A html file
encoded in UTF-16 will look like garbage.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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