ant and encoding of properties files

[Felix Schumacher]

Hi all,

newer ant versions can do the char encoding conversion done by 
native2ascii by itself. That means we could store a variant of the 
localization message properties files encoded with UTF-8 and let ant do 
the conversion at compile time. That way it would be easier to spell 
check the localized messages.

Downside would be that we would have to switch to newer ant versions 
(not a bad idea anyway) and that it would be less clear for newcomers 
which file they would have to edit.

What do you think about switching to UTF-8 encoded localization files 
and converting them with ant at compile time?

Regards,

 Felix