Locale - Why You Should Use UTF-8 Print

What is Localization?

Localization refers to the translation of text in one language into multiple other languages, as well as the addition of cultural adaptations to make a product usable globally.

While it is possible to use other character sets for a locale system, utf-8 offers many benefits that other character sets lack, and has no known issues. For this reason, we only recommend utf-8 locales.

Why utf-8 ?

The locale system uses the utf-8 character encoding for several specific reasons:

• Character sets and collations are complicated topics. A unified standard simplifies the localization process immensely.
• utf-8 support is universal.
• utf-8 allows you to list multiple languages in a single interface or file (for example, to create a menu of available locales).
• utf-8 ensures that the locale system can interact with external systems (for example, file editors and databases). 
• Languages like JavaScript and Perl can natively use utf-8 data.

While it is possible for a locale to use another character encoding, we have yet to find a good reason to do so.