Zope: Using UTF-8 in the Management Interface (ZMI)

To really use utf-8 unicode in your zope management interface (as of Version 2.7.X), go to the "Root Folder", click on "Properties" and add a property with the following settings:
Name: management_page_charset
Type: String
Value: utf-8

Why is that necessary? Why does it seem to work without it too? It somehow does, but when entering unicode into text fields, those characters will get replaced with html entities like {. Confuses ZCatalog searches and is impossible to edit.

Update 9.5.2005: One pushback with this solution is the handling of properties in the ZMI: On the properties tab all the choices for Unicode types ("ustring", "ulist", etc.) are gone. Even when I add properties with those types through a script, the display and editing of such properties is broken. I think some of the trouble is documented in this Zope Collector entry called " Zope unicode patch". But I believe there might be other problems too.