At the initial standardization period there were a number of Unicode transport protocols, some of them really weird (7-bit UTF for one). As of now Notepad++ is pretty straightforward with what needed. It has in its settings: The rule of thumb is that default UTF-8 + "Apply to open ANSI files" is the only thing one ought to use.
Anything else is only for two distinct situations: 1) one got some unreadable chunk of chars from a 3rd party file and needs to make it readable Unicode 2) one is seeking for new oops-type adventures for (her|him)self and for end users.

In reply to Re^5: Proper Unicode handling in Perl (aside on Notepad++) by VK
in thread Is there some universal Unicode+UTF8 switch? by VK

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.