Storing Unicode - for cross-platform apps in MC 2.5.

[david]

> The uniEncode and uniDecode functions now return data in a
> platform-specific byte order, which is required to use these functions
> with the new unicode display capability.  Use the binaryEncode()
> function if you need to convert to a platform-independent encoding.

Exploring the new Unicode feature of 2.5... a few basic questions:

What is a good strategy for storing text so that it will have a good chance
of displaying correctly on different platforms using this feature. So far I
can't get the same text displaying on Windows and Mac.

I think I should be using binary data storage (so a file or custom property)
and storing the unicode in a platform independent format using the
binaryEncode function... Then decoding it to the right bight order depending
on the user platform. Is this right?

Not sure what byte orders are on which platforms... Help appreciated.

Anyone have an example function to allow conversion to and from the relevant
byte orders using binaryEncode?

Is there a way to test whether unicode or other text encodings are installed
on a particular machine?