Do nothing. Stick with the default unless there is a valid reason not to.
I see you mention setting up a new unix developer on a Mac. If this developer has any Mac experience, he'll be used to the default and will probably get confused if you've customized things. If you're writing software that ships out to customers, the customer will (usually) have the default configuration and so trying to debug on a system that is "unfamiliar" (i.e. not your comfy customized environment) can be very frustrating.
If (like me) you work with many different machines and operating systems you quickly learn the defaults for that system, what keyboard shortcuts are portable between systems, standard commands for each OS, etc.
What you really need to do here is get a new machine, see what doesn't work (looks like UTF-8 support is fine, I just checked on my Mac) and see if there are any valid reasons for making changes. Developers have their own preferences when it comes to the command line and really don't appreciate being forced into using what someone else thinks is an "ideal setup". It might be ideal for you, but Apple are pretty damn good at figuring out sensible defaults.
The only thing I'd really change by default when setting up a new Mac, is making the Tab key cycle through all controls (including buttons) rather than just text boxes and lists. I know it's not terminal-related, but it does make a huge difference for us keyboard junkies who rarely lift their hand to use a mouse :)
Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts > Full keyboard access > All Controls
Use convmv:
Package: convmv
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Installed-Size: 88
Maintainer: Raphael Zimmerer <killekulla@rdrz.de>
Architecture: all
Version: 1.12-1
Depends: perl
Filename: pool/main/c/convmv/convmv_1.12-1_all.deb
Size: 20052
MD5sum: dcc45d5b8517026f588d769d81d67768
SHA1: 55da9650cfee5c64d8a4fdf278aaf9401a5e5dec
SHA256: 0a8b0165a78dc42f7dc665a14d21c22ce0433d115fe537be2af74682d3b82a5f
Description: filename encoding conversion tool
convmv can convert a single filename, a directory tree or all files
on a filesystem to a different encoding. It only converts the
encoding of filenames, not files contents. A special feature of
convmv is that it also takes care of symlinks: the encoding of the
symlink's target will be converted if the symlink itself is being
converted.
.
It is also possible to convert directories to UTF-8 which are already
partially UTF-8 encoded.
.
Keywords: rename, move
Tag: devel::i18n, implemented-in::perl, interface::commandline, role::program, scope::utility, works-with::file
apt-get install convmv
:-)
Best Answer
Really, the surefire way to test is to download a text file and cat it in the terminal and see if everything looks ok.
or, if you can, recompile the terminal enabling the unicode option (assuming it has one).
what does $TERM and $LANG look like?