If someone could summarize the recent Unicode/multibyte string 
discussion on a wiki, that would be nice (and _very_ useful). It will 
help programmers prepare their code for Unicode support and backward 
compatibility in the future. Topics should include:

- how will strings be stored in memory (which probably be different 
between CRuby, JRuby, Ruby-on-Parrot, Ruby-on-dotnet, etc);

- how to check a string's charset, encoding;

- how to do various operations in the new multibyte sring, especially 
those which will be done differently compared to the classic string;

- what will happen to the classic string (e.g. will it perhaps be 
renamed to ByteArray or something);

- comparison rules for cross-encoding and cross-charset strings;

- regexes;

- how will Ruby differ from Perl/Python/Java/PHP in Unicode/multibyte 
string support (especially since Ruby is a pretty latecomer in the 
Unicode scene);

Regards,
dave