Re: i18n/gettext?

[Richard Stallman]

    They might not want to edit them, but they might want to (say) print
    them, without using Emacs.  Or they may want to use 'grep' on them.
    If the files use a private Emacs encoding, these other tools won't
    work properly.

Some of these tools will work more or less with any encoding.  But
this whole issue is a secondary issue; we can base the decision on
this if no really important issue turns up.