Though I hate dumping encoding bugs on unsuspected passerbys.

Wish i had the same luxury. It feels like i'm spending half my life fixing encoding bugs these days. Unicode is great... when it works. Just last month i spend half an afternoon trying to fix a printing bug, until i realized that font i was using had a bug...

But look at it this way: Humans have lots of different cultures and writing systems. The more Unicode bugs we fix, the more inclusive our programs become. In the long term, tearing down the walls that divide cultures will (hopefully) bring people closer together and reduce the prevalence of bigotry and wars.