AV>> There really is, but that character set is not acceptable for the AV>> whole Fidonet (it is acceptable for the majority, but that majority AV>> prefers another character set for reading and writing the FTN AV>> messages). JD> Yes, and that would be region by region. A universal character set JD> does not really exist, IMO. UTF 8 might be close, but I dont think JD> it handles Cyrillic does it?
It does, but in a very stupid way. That's why personally I prefer KOI8-R for Cyrillic-only texts (primarily, Russian), and use UTF-8 only for Chinese.
AV>> Each echoarea uses some working language, which can be presented AV>> using some compatible character set. For example, mailing lists in AV>> Russian normally use KOI8-R (defined in the GOST 19768-74 standard, AV>> see also RFC 1489), and Fidonet messages in R50 (and around) AV>> normally use CP866. JD> Yup. Very aware of that.
Given that, when we need to use English, we don't change anything, but simply use the Latin part of those character sets.
-- Alexey V. Vissarionov aka Gremlin from Kremlin gremlin.ru!gremlin; +vii-cmiii-ccxxix-lxxix-xlii
