Hallo Richard!

 RM> But I also do not have the need to send characters of languages
 RM> that I do not speak.

I can relate especially considering that I haven't ever mastered the language I
speak, nevermind ones that I don't.  Having said that I can see where utf-8
supported echoareas might improve the current situation in Fidonet.  It is
worth a shot ... maybe.

 RM> Some people tried to add UTF-8 support, but they gave up.

I don't blame them.  For my part I just use an already capable editor (vim in
my case but there are many others) and took it from there.  One thing I've
noticed is that it doesn't matter if a kludge is provided or not.  Both golded
and msged will screw them up with or without a CHRS kludge.  It is a total
waste of bytes and probably only encourages the FTSC powers that be to write
further jibberish they call "standards".  :::evil grin:::

Het leven is goed,
Maurice

... Huil niet om mij, ik heb vi.
--- GNU bash, version 4.4.23(1)-release (x86_64-bonnell-linux-gnu)