title: reading in utf-8 file (javascript XMLHttpRequest) gives bad european characters
body: <p>can anyone help? I have small procedure to read in an UTF-8 file with javascript using XMLHttpRequest.. this file has european characters like miércoles sábado etc.. Notice the accents..</p>
  
  <p>But when being read in .. the characters are all messed up.. I have checked the file and it is perfect.. it must be the procedure for reading in.. </p>
  
  <p>heres an example i have file that contains, the file is perfect, it happens to be javascript but it doesn't matter.. any UTF-8 encoding file with special characters gives me the same issue</p>
  
  <p>this.weekDays = new Array("Lunes", "Martes", "Miércoles", "Jueves", "Viernes", "Sábado", "Domingo");</p>
  
  <p>but when returned and read by the procedure below it is like this (notice the funny characters in sabado and miercoles)</p>
  
  <p>this.weekDays = new Array("Lunes", "Martes", "MiÃ©rcoles", "Jueves", "Viernes", "SÃ¡bado", "Domingo");</p>
  
  <p>Here is my procedure - its very small...</p>
  
  <pre><code>var contentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8";
  
  var request = new XMLHttpRequest(); 
  request.open("GET", path, false);
  request.setRequestHeader('Content-type', contentType)
  
  if (request.overrideMimeType) request.overrideMimeType(contentType);
  
  try { request.send(null); }
  catch (e) { return null; }
  if (request.status == 500 || request.status == 404 || request.status == 2 || (request.status == 0 &amp;&amp; request.responseText == '')) return null;
  
  //PROBLEM HERE is with european charcters that are read in
  
  print(request.responseText);
  
  
  return request.responseText;
  </code></pre>