What could go wrong in switching HTML encoding from UTF-8 to UTF-16?

Question

What are the implications of a change from UTF-8 to UTF-16 for HTML encoding? I would like to know your thoughts on the issue. Are there things I need to think of before m

Answer 1

Very nice article you have held here. Fundamentals states, "When a unique character encoding is required, the character encoding MUST be UTF-8, UTF-16 or UTF-32. US-ASCII is upwards-compatible with UTF-8 (an US-ASCII string is also a UTF-8 string, see [RFC 3629]), and UTF-8 is therefore appropriate if compatibility with US-ASCII is desired." In practice, compatibility with US-ASCII is so useful it's almost a requirement. The W3C wisely explains, "In other situations, such as for APIs, UTF-16 or UTF-32 may be more appropriate. Possible reasons for choosing one of these include efficiency of internal processing and interoperability with other processes."