"if it reloaded then there would be no way to change the encoding of the document as noted in the manual."
not understand what's that mean.
as my experience, open non-utf8 plain txt file, change encoding, editor auto reload, it's simple, naturally actions.
if i wan to change the orig file encoding, such as gbk->utf8 whaterver, i just create new empty file with utf8 then crtl+c/v, or by enconv/iconv tool.