UTF-8 and BOM

Hi all,

After recently reading thoroughly over the latest DSig spec, I noticed
several places where we have qualified UTF-8 with the parenthetic "without
byte order mark" or words to that effect.

I'm still unsure why one would ever need a BOM for UTF-8.  I thought the
point of UTF-8 was to have a format that could provide lots of Unicode/UCS
characters but not be subject to the endian disease.

Still, I'm sure there is a reason, so could someone please explain it?

Thanks,

     John Boyer
      Development Team Leader,
      Distributed Processing and XML
      PureEdge Solutions Inc.
      Creating Binding E-Commerce
      v: 250-479-8334, ext. 143  f: 250-479-3772
      1-888-517-2675   http://www.PureEdge.com