I agree with Denis about coding for Russia. 

I really would like to leave KOI-8R as a standard for KDE Docbook
files for now. I don't see any problem for a long run with this, because
it is easy to transliterate Koi-8r sgml(docbook) files to whatever we will
need. Much harder to urge people to abandon their favorite
editor to something that KDE with Unicode supports. 

For example I use vim from console for translations
and I will be very unhappy be forced to switch to something else, because
this is the best and fastest way for me. Actually, one of great things
about Free Software world is freedom of choice. If people will think that
KDE tries to _force_ people to something, like KDE editors or browsers
by implementing standards that are not yet compatible with other things, 
this will make KDE look bad. What's good about that? 

From practical point of view, I suspect the switching to Unicode
will leave me and Denis without Russian translators. 

From my experience I can say that since documents were moved from public
view I have 1-2 tranlsators working with documentation (including me).
Before it was 8-10. This is very sad. I just ask you not to make the
situation worse.

Regards,
Dmitry