Because a Unicode character and a UTF-8 character are different entities.

How so? What do you mean by "UTF-8 character"? I read that as "one Unicode character encoded in UTF-8", not as "one byte".

Wouldn't it be best to discuss proposed changes before submitting anything?

Yes. But that's not what your question sounded like. It sounded more like "is it just me, or were the original authors jerks?"

I spent 7 yours one day trying to do just that--without success, and I will never, ever try to interface with that archaic system ever again.

Now it would be interesting to here what you man by "that archaic system". The source control system is quite modern. The p5p list is another matter, but so far I never had problems getting doc patches applied.