[R] gettext and utf-8

[JKPeck]

We are building message catalogs in utf-8, and we want all characters
to be preserved in the strings returned by gettext.  I.e., we do not
want conversion to the locale code page (unless it, too, is utf-8).

We are unable to set the locale to a utf-8 encoding on Windows.  Using
iconv to convert to utf-8 won't help, because characters will have
been lost before that point.

Is there a way to force gettext to return the utf-8 text in the
message catalog without any encoding conversion?

Using R2.8.  We'll actually want this to work on all platforms.

TIA.

-Jon Peck