I'm working a lot with UTF-8 text files and mainly in this format. It's becoming annoying when I have to manually save every text file as UTF-8. After several trial-and-errors, I've made up a procedure that I've put in a blog. I think I could share
it here for those who need it. Hope it helps.
http://instrumenti-meliora.blogspot.com/2014/04/create-new-text-file-in-utf-8-format-by.html