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+Currenty, git-annex forces output, particularly of filenames, in a utf-8
+locale.
+
+Note that this does not mean it cannot be used with filenames in other
+encodings. It just displays their names always converted to utf-8, which 
+may not look right when you have a non-utf8 locale.
+
+This had to be done to work around some bugs with haskell's handling
+of filename encodings. In particular,
+
+* [[bugs/unhappy_without_UTF8_locale]]: haskell crashes when told to output 
+  a string with characters > 255 in a non-utf8 locale.
+* [[bugs/problems_with_utf8_names]]: On many OSs, haskell expects
+  non-decoded raw char8 in FilePaths. In order to display a filename,
+  though, it needs to first be decoded, and git-annex currently assumes
+  it was encoded as utf8.
+
+git-annex's behavior is unlikely to improve much until haskell's
+support for utf8 filenames improves. --[[Joey]]