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I found this encoding in the configuration of a text editor. What does UTF-8Y mean and how it is different from UTF-8?

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minerals
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    I'd never heard of it before, but a quick search suggests that UTF-8Y is just normal UTF-8, but with a byte-order mark at the beginning of the document. – Jon Skeet May 16 '14 at 16:28
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    @JonSkeet, make that an answer. The jEdit documentation does not seem to say that explicitly, but see e.g. http://community.jedit.org/?q=node/view/2965 – Jukka K. Korpela May 16 '14 at 16:43
  • @JukkaK.Korpela: I would do, but I think this question is very close to being off-topic. It's not really a *programming* question, is it? I haven't voted this as off-topic, but I'm somewhat minded to. – Jon Skeet May 16 '14 at 16:47
  • @JonSkeet, I see, but this might be regarded as marginally on-topic, as relating to tools used primarily for programming. – Jukka K. Korpela May 16 '14 at 17:33

1 Answers1

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UTF-8Y is UTF-8 including the optional byte-order-mark. As far as I remember the Y stands for "Yes".

Vampire
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    UTF-8Y is mentioned in the [JEdit documentation](http://www.jedit.org/users-guide/encodings.html): "BOM: UTF-16 and **UTF-8Y** files are auto-detected, because they begin with a certain fixed character sequence. Note that **plain UTF-8** does not mandate a specific header, and thus cannot be auto-detected, unless the file in question is an XML file." So that does imply that UTF-8Y is UTF-8 with a BOM. – Remy Lebeau May 19 '14 at 23:27
  • Well, that is exactly what I said, isn't it? – Vampire May 20 '14 at 00:23
  • I wasn't suggesting what you said was wrong. I was merely pointing out that the text editor's own documentation backs up what you said. – Remy Lebeau May 20 '14 at 00:42
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    Well, I'm one of the main people behind jEdit and it could even be me who came up with the name, I don't remember. ;-) – Vampire May 20 '14 at 06:54