-=> Maurice Kinal wrote to Tony Langdon <=-

 MK> Nothing to be alarmed about.  BOM = (B)yte (O)rder (M)ark and it has
 MK> more to do with utf-16 than utf-8.  I am guessing that notepad can also
 MK> handle utf-16 which explains it adding the BOM at the beginning of the
 MK> message it is concerned with.  It is used to determine the endianess of
 MK> the machine and in your case it is obviously little endian which is in
 MK> the majority of computers in use.

Makes sense, now it all becomes clear. :)

 MK> Not true but definetly not in wide use until recently.  I heard it was
 MK> considered to be used by the majority of web apps back in 2008 which
 MK> wasn't that long ago relatively speaking.

2008 is still "very recent" compared to BBS software. :)  Our first BBS shut
down in 1998, and my own point system met its demise in 2001-2002 (I hung on as
long as I could, but issues specific to the time did get in the way).  I can't
recall when I first heard of UTF-8, but it was definitely before 2008 and after
2002.  I know by 2008-2009, I was having to deal with UTF-16, working at an
international training college, where both content and filenames could have
Asian characters (the latter causing issues with backups at the time).

 TL> Obviously, calling up more moden third party editors works for
 TL> some things. :)

 MK> I believe vi has been around longer than DOS but if not then definetly
 MK> longer than any version of Windows.  Same with other editors that don't
 MK> corrupt existing utf8 characters in FTN messages.

I'm sure vi has also been constantly updated to meet the needs of current
environments too, so while there has been some form of "vi" around for decades,
I'd be pretty sure much of the internals of your copy of vi are relatively new.
... Uncertainty:  Finding your wife reading your Will.
--- MultiMail/Win32 v0.49