UNICODE，UTF-8和Windows混乱

I'm trying to implement text support in Windows with the intention of also moving to a Linux platform later on. It would be ideal to support international languages in a uniform way but that doesn't seem to be easily accomplished when considering the two platforms in question. I have spent a considerable amount of time reading up on UNICODE, UTF-8 (and other encodings), widechars and such and here is what I have come to understand so far:I'm trying to implement text support in Windows