Just as a bit of evidence of how difficult it can be to grok character issues: Unicode is not "an encoding" itself, but a repertoire of characters, their names, and (abstract) code points (i.e., UCS), plus a set of encodings (i.e., UTF-8, UTF-16), extra properties, and algorithms. And I'm sure a Unicode geek could pick some wholes in what I've said!
True enough :-) Part of the problem in discussing Unicode (and other things) is that one can speak to it at a 'standards' level or an 'in practice' level at whatever level of practice the person encounters Unicode. By encoding I wasn't intending to imply that it was like dealing with a codepage equivalent, but that there are assumptions that are part of using Unicode that may not be visible to the people using it. I'm thinking that the stated intent by a programmer, say in an open source project, that the project is using unicode for the purposes of being 'politically friendly' and interoperable would have the effect of not only making the statement, but encouraging people to help guide the programmer(s) in actually achieving that goal -- those who have a deeper understanding of the issues informing those who are looking for the practical goal of interoperability. Mike