From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Yuri Khan Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Facts for fans: encodings history (was: Re: Getting Emacs to play nice with Hunspell and apostrophes) Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 17:46:34 +0700 Message-ID: References: <87ha3s71mt.fsf@debian.uxu> <87tx7rsevi.fsf@debian.uxu> <8738fbscao.fsf@debian.uxu> <87sin8use8.fsf@debian.uxu> <87ioo4ukyq.fsf_-_@debian.uxu> <8361k3x5ch.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1402742817 18958 80.91.229.3 (14 Jun 2014 10:46:57 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:46:57 +0000 (UTC) Cc: "help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org" To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Jun 14 12:46:52 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1WvlU2-0003jc-Sp for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 14 Jun 2014 12:46:51 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:34847 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WvlU2-0003J1-Dp for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:46:50 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:37889) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WvlTr-0003Ir-C8 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:46:40 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WvlTq-0006Jb-4o for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:46:39 -0400 Original-Received: from mail-qc0-x230.google.com ([2607:f8b0:400d:c01::230]:61912) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WvlTn-0006J4-4Q; Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:46:35 -0400 Original-Received: by mail-qc0-f176.google.com with SMTP id w7so4243402qcr.21 for ; Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:46:34 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject :from:to:cc:content-type; bh=J9Re3PYMVnblyL8006O4cYTa6+fU9aI9xHEZgEDDWk8=; b=dxaUXLxIKN7H/tZFHwTivTCidVYMiDdzuF4lUfXsOud2spHoknJWGAc7u8FbA3F3kH Mfsh+VFa0mHpoC/tmAcoWB0J5VttrxUl+bJCxZ9xKGx7mfnSX2LQovgBqmavPB5YBGNl 3s/5MoVR8D9GAKyZJfFiGTflc+h5nJUuu6VTEl0RBC0VUyMFxF6xZQVCiHQS9HzVyc6B EFI+USG4Ukx1DcLn+hpJeh0Zm/eVEGgokxfchGLGTxtjRjAP3eNhmpr4FtEDFOu8XBSv miHejQJIPC9WapHVza1URwEgWF2/yaOm49m9VxajyJqcecJkvx0xeqm/r7ZOiEvlusIU aqkQ== X-Received: by 10.224.151.206 with SMTP id d14mr10614739qaw.35.1402742794511; Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:46:34 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: by 10.96.154.73 with HTTP; Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:46:34 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <8361k3x5ch.fsf@gnu.org> X-Google-Sender-Auth: -CWXc2mwK1nFK6bCizMD5L8kQ6M X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Error: Malformed IPv6 address (bad octet value). X-Received-From: 2607:f8b0:400d:c01::230 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:98244 Archived-At: On Sat, Jun 14, 2014 at 3:28 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote: >> [iso-8859-5] is regarded as a design-by-committee encoding bearing >> no connection to the needs of real-world users. > > I guess you mean non-Russian committee, because who do you think > invented KOI8-R? some private Russian citizen? KOI8-R was defined by > a Soviet State Standard GOST-19768-74, which already means at least > one committee was involved. > > (Interested readers should see http://czyborra.com/charsets/cyrillic.html > for more details.) Sure. KOI-8 is from GOST-19768-74, and ISO-8859-5 was derived from GOST-19768-87. The former had the advantage of being already established and widely used, so the latter never caught on. The next incompatible standard, CP866, had the advantage of preserving pseudographic characters from CP437 used on PCs, so became a de facto standard for DOS even before Microsoft started officially supporting it. > No one really thinks Russian cities are full of bears with balalaikas, > but please don't pretend non-Russian cities are full of fools who > cannot design a character set on a good day. Next we will probably > hear that no one except Russians can design railways, because the only > correct standard of railway track width is the Russian one. Sheesh... > > There should be no place for such bigotry on this forum. Of course not. My point is that it is a frequent misconception among Europeans that ISO-8859-5 was in any position to be a standard encoding for Russia. The other point is that, from the current standpoint, all of these encodings are horrible and must die in favor of UTF-8 as soon as possible.