X<=encoding> X<encoding>
This command is used for declaring the encoding of a document. Most
-users won't need this; but if your encoding isn't US-ASCII or Latin-1,
-then put a C<=encoding I<encodingname>> command early in the document so
+users won't need this; but if your encoding isn't US-ASCII,
+then put a C<=encoding I<encodingname>> command very early in the document so
that pod formatters will know how to decode the document. For
I<encodingname>, use a name recognized by the L<Encode::Supported>
-module. Examples:
+module. Some pod formatters may try to guess between a Latin-1 or
+CP-1252 versus
+UTF-8 encoding, but they may guess wrong. It's best to be explicit if
+you use anything besides strict ASCII. Examples:
+
+ =encoding latin1
=encoding utf8
And don't forget, all commands but C<=encoding> last up
until the end of its I<paragraph>, not its line. So in the
examples below, you can see that every command needs the blank
-line after it, to end its paragraph. (And some older
-Pod translators may require the C<=encoding> line to be similarly
-separated.)
+line after it, to end its paragraph. (And some older Pod translators
+may require the C<=encoding> line to have a following blank line as
+well, even though it should be legal to omit.)
Some examples of lists include:
Note that older Pod formatters might not recognize octal or
hex numeric escapes, and that many formatters cannot reliably
render characters above 255. (Some formatters may even have
-to use compromised renderings of Latin-1 characters, like
+to use compromised renderings of Latin-1/CP-1252 characters, like
rendering C<EE<lt>eacuteE<gt>> as just a plain "e".)
=back