Hi Michael and Mike,

Just an FYI here.

At 2020-08-13T09:38:06+0200, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
> Hi Mike,
> 
> On 7/26/20 8:23 AM, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > From: Mike Frysinger <vapier@chromium.org>
> > 
> > This header is used inconsistently -- man pages are UTF-8 encoded
> > but not setting this marker.  It's only respected by the man-db
> > package, and seems a bit anachronistic at this point when UTF-8
> > is the standard default nowadays.
> 
> Thanks. Patch applied.

Sorry I missed Mike's original mail, but there is _something_ else
besides man-db that respects this "coding: utf-8" thing.

It's the editor that some people might use to maintain the man pages:
GNU Emacs[1].

That said, UTF-8 is an easy encoding to detect, the Unix standard of
many years now as you note, and for about that long Emacs has also
scanned the ends of files for file variables as well (in a more
expressive and powerful format), so they don't need to be packed in at
the beginning.

Also, it's no skin off me personally because I use Vim.  :P

Regards,
Branden

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Specifying-File-Variables.html#Specifying-File-Variables