Some more testing, none of these behave like :raw, they seem to "work"

Fudge( __FILE__ , ':raw:perlio:encoding(UTF-16LE):crlf', 6 );
Fudge( __FILE__ , ':raw:perlio:encoding(UTF-16LE):utf8', 6 );
Fudge( __FILE__ , ':raw:perlio', 7666 );
Fudge( __FILE__ , ':raw:win32', 6 );
Fudge( __FILE__ , ':win32', 6 );
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Though now its obvious that the :raw issue is probably pointer arithmetic related (and/or related to Chicanery Needed to Handle Unicode Text on Microsoft Windows)

It remains, that setting a lower length than previous buffer length, doesn't change the length, only setting a higher one changes it

I reiterate, this definitely needs official support :)