> Is the "Ruby 1.9's view" somewhere described in detail? I still have the feeling that it is just half baked :/
You have explanations in James Gray's series of article on 1.9's M17N :
http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/ruby_19s_string
(for all the articles :
http://blog.grayproductions.net/categories/character_encodings)