[stinos]

Plus if you try to rename a dotfile through explorer, it won't let you

It does, rename it .dotfile. so with an extra . at the end.

it has a different text encoding than nix,*

You don't specify how you do this, but most text output commands out there have an -Encoding parameter. Or else set it globally to what you want, good read here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40098771/changing-powers...