[plt-scheme] Why do MzScheme ports not respect the locale's encoding by default?

Alex Shinn <foof at synthcode.com> writes:

> At 18 Feb 2005 20:34:37 -0500, Jim Blandy wrote:
> > 
> > [...] do you think most users want applications to respect locale
> > settings --- and specifically, the character encoding --- or do you
> > think most users would like applications to ignore them?
> 
> Most users don't even know what character encodings are and could care
> less.  They do, however, want software to interact together, which
> causes complications.

Okay, maybe my question is a little like asking whether users prefer
little-endian or big-endian byte orderings.  To rephrase it more
meaningfully: are most users better served by using the current
locale's character encoding, or by ignoring it and always using UTF-8?

If using the current locale's encoding for files and pipes (network
streams are usually self-identifying) will constantly cause troubles,
then the answer would be the latter.