This is a newbie question. I really don't understand the issue with Unicode and the image/vm/os in Pharo/SqueakVM/Linux,Windows. I searched the lists for references to utf-8 and the long discussions about leadingChar encodings convert*Encoding methods Strings WideStrings Text DisplayText WAKom and WAKomEncoded keyboard input text file input/output vm's -encoding -textenc options So, the people that know about this things, can you please give a newbie explanation about this. What is needed for we users to: 1. Input text by keyboard with accents (and maybe in the language of Mordor too) and they look not like a diamond with a ? sign in the image system browser. 2. This text be correctly send to a modern web browser and rendered in utf-8 encoding correctly. 3. Upload a java messages bundle (or a file with characters outside ASCII) with a web browser posted to a Seaside application, stored temporaly in disk on the server and processed correctly (by opening it with some FileStream class) inside the image. Or is this really hard to do and I'm asking for the imposible? I understand that there are performance issues with full unicode image/vm but supposing that premature optimization rule applies here, what we need to do to achieve this (utopian maybe) goal? Why the question, because I put some strings inside the image (they look fine as I type them). Then I used them to put labels in my Seaside app. In the image I typed and saw in a code browser: Búsqueda de información But the web browser (firefox) I see: B�squeda de informaci�n If I change the web browser encoding to iso8859-1 I see it correctly. Now if I evaluate 'Búsqueda de información' convertToEncoding: 'utf-8' this gives: 'Búsqueda de información' and if I use this weird, uneditable by hand, string as the string for my Seaside app, I correctly see the string in the web browser: Búsqueda de información. So, I really don't understand. Should I always write my strings in the image as I want them, use convertToEncoding: method and use the output as if that were my string? Well, thanks for your answers. P.S. I am using pharo core 1.0, Seaside 2.8 and squeakvm version: 4.0.3-2202 #1 XShm Sat Apr 17 18:21:07 UTC 2010 gcc 4.4.3 in a 64 bit Debian Linux with full utf-8 locale: miguel@laptop:~/proyectos/azteca$ locale LANG=es_MX.UTF-8 LC_CTYPE="es_MX.UTF-8" LC_NUMERIC="es_MX.UTF-8" LC_TIME="es_MX.UTF-8" LC_COLLATE="es_MX.UTF-8" LC_MONETARY="es_MX.UTF-8" LC_MESSAGES="es_MX.UTF-8" LC_PAPER="es_MX.UTF-8" LC_NAME="es_MX.UTF-8" LC_ADDRESS="es_MX.UTF-8" LC_TELEPHONE="es_MX.UTF-8" LC_MEASUREMENT="es_MX.UTF-8" LC_IDENTIFICATION="es_MX.UTF-8" LC_ALL= Cheers -- Miguel Cobá http://miguel.leugim.com.mx