Thank you for your patience Jim.
Try this at a shell prompt:
env LANG=C LC_ALL=C cat --show-all FileName
where FileName is the file in question. The non-ascii characters will be output as strings that look M-? where ? is a single ascii character. If you see a single M-? triplet in place of each non-ascii character you do not have utf-8. If you see between two and five such triplets for each non-ascii character in the document it is probably utf-8. (If you see ^@ pairs separating the ascii chars you have utf-16.)
Okay, this gives me some comfort as it seems to confirm that I do have UTF-8 as I thought. I'm seeing twos, threes and fours of the triplets you describe, and no evidence of high-ascii single chars nor of ^@. So I'm pretty sure it is UTF-8. Thanks for this.
I've only tested on tetex-3. That may make a difference....
I think maybe it does. Is there anyone who is running the *minimal install* (from Hans' zip files) on either windows or linux who could test this for me? I just need you to try out a unicode accented character within an <mtext> element inside MathML. Here's my template again - put an unicode accented char where 'HERE' appears: \useXMLfilter[utf]\usemodule[mathml] \starttext\startXMLdata <formula><math><mtext>HERE</mtext></math></formula> \stopXMLdata\stoptext
You may want to give TeX-Live a test.
It's usually my first port of call, but AFAIK it's not possible to control the way the web browser re-encodes stuff before it is submitted, so the results are not reliable. This is a real shame - TeX-Live is how I usually confirm all my queries. Thanks again Jim; can anyone running the minimal install help me? Duncan