gettin' ANSI

can someone explain -- in idiot's terms -- the relaionship between txt, ascii, ansi, and the "display" version of unicode or double-wide code or w/e it is which handles foreign fonts?

i use chinese a lot. while it displays as junk in notepad, etc., the info is preserved and i can later use various other apps (incl IE, via "encoding") to display it in chinese. note that i am saving the files as normal TXT files.

otoh, some files i've downloaded have chinese titles to begin with. to its credit, windows displays these just fine w/o me even doing any tweakery. otoh, if i cut/paste these names into a TXT file, they cannot save unless i save "as ansi". if i save it as a normal file, the kanji all turns into question marks next time i open the file. in other words, having the characters DISPLAY in the first place ultimately backfires!

the distinction can be seen even more clearly with MP3s, where the "name" column and the "title" column (assuming it's set to display) in a folder normally match...except when dealing with fonts like this. in this case, the "name" is rendered in chinese whereas the "title" (and various related places, such as scroll insider player) displays as junk. junk which is ultimately PREFERED, however, since i can cut/paste it into txt files w/o losing the chinese!

this is both counterintuitive and confusing. like the time i found out skim-milk cheese had more calories and more fat than whole milk cheese!

can anyone clear this up? i haven't dealt w this "prep version" and "display version" of files since the days of NROFF....