The normal workflow is:

1. Decode all incoming data (with Encode::decode or with an IO layer)
2. Work with your data
3. Encode all outgoing data (with Encode::encode or an IO layer)

The problem is that HTML::Template doesn't support step one - it always reads templates as binary data. Once you mix that with decoded data, you're lost.

One solution is to use HTML::Template::Compiled, which is a drop-in replacement for HTML::Template, and which has the open_mode option to new - just create your templates with

use HTML::Template::Compiled;
my $t = HTML::Template::Compiled->new(
       filename  => 'mytemplate.phtml',
       open_mode => '<:encoding(UTF-8)',
);
[download]

Another "solution" is to encode every string that is passed to HTML::Template, but this will make your code explode (in terms of size, anyway).

Update: a few debugging tips when dealing with charset issues:

• In firefox press Ctrl+I to see the encoding that is actually used to display the page
• Check your error.log (or STDERR) for "wide character in print"-warnings - it means that you forgot an IO-Layer or a encode_utf8 somewhere.
• Use Devel::Peek to inspect your data - watch out for that UTF-8 flag

2nd update: you might have confused "encode" and "decode" - you have to decode input data from the outside (Foreign data -> Perl text strings) and you have to encode data in the other direction (Perl text strings -> Rest of World).

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