TextEdit removes Byte-Order-Mark (BOM) from Unicode/UTF files. How to fix? I'm working with UTF-8 files, but TextEdit seems to not fully support the BOM. When a BOM is present, it DOES render unicode characters correctly. However, upon saving the file, the BOM is removed, so subsequently opening the file in TextEdit causes 'the wrong' characters to be displayed.

Is there a way of remedying this? Bear in mind I'm sharing files with several non-technical users, so anything related to the command-line is out of the question. If the solution is 'use another text editor', this might just about be acceptable, if it's free, and not totally different from TextEdit - i.e. the simpler, the better. But, ideally, there's a way of fixing TextEdit ...
This isn't the main solution you're looking for, but TextWrangler is free, handles UTF-8 (and many other encodings) very well, and doesn't have too steep a learning curve, particularly if you're just using functionality similar to TextEdit. I know you'd like to fix TextEdit, and I hope you get an answer explaining how to do that, but in the absence of a primary solution, this should be a good backup plan.