Thanks, this is quite useful. From reading the comments in the tests you linked to, it looks like Stas & Co have made binmode 'Just Work', and I am going to guess the binmode only affects the current request object, so not a big deal to have different binmode for different apps.

Doing $r->print($utf8_content) apparently just works, too (based on the comments in the linked tests).

Also, having re-read the binmode docs, I see it is in any explicitly OK to reset the layer while the handle is in progress, in any case.

Thanks!