UTF-8 decoding usually means translating UTF-8 text to a more convenient character representation like UTF-32 or if you are naughty UTF-16 before processing, not adapting the application to work with UTF-8 data.
I think the principle of charity applies here. What other possible interpretation of UTF-8 decoding is there for what I wrote? I mean, the automaton literally contains a UTF-8 automaton right in it, and semantically, it is totally matching in terms of codepoints.
