with external libraries or existing data. G_FLOAT is still available as
a configuration option. The default on VAX (D_FLOAT) has not changed.
-=head2 New Unicode Semantics (no more C<use utf8>)
+=head2 New Unicode Semantics (no more C<use utf8>, almost)
Previously in Perl 5.6 to use Unicode one would say "use utf8" and
then the operations (like string concatenation) were Unicode-aware
Unicode model has completely changed: now the "Unicodeness" is bound
to the data itself, and for most of the time "use utf8" is not needed
at all. The only remaining use of "use utf8" is when the Perl script
-itself has been written in the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode.
+itself has been written in the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode. (UTF-8 has
+not been made the default since there are many Perl scripts out there
+that are using various national eight-bit character sets, which would
+be illegal in UTF-8.)
See L<perluniintro> for the explanation of the current model,
and L<utf8> for the current use of the utf8 pragma.