koi8

[Hugh Jenkins]

I cannot speak for Mac users, and I hesitate to burden this present
message with technological detail, but I have definitely read
material in Russian (KOI8) over the Web. I have not tried to do this
with Netscape. I may have been very lucky, but I had no problem in
getting it to work once I had the fonts.

I am wondering whether subscribers to this list may expect Russian
text to be recognised as such by the browser and to perform an
automatic switch of font. This certainly cannot be done. Standard
HTML has as yet no code for font changes - a major drawback to anyone
putting web material together.

Hence if you are viewing KOI8 material you have to recognise the
gobbledegook as Russian, and change the font manually. You will need
to do this for the various elements of the documents such as headers
as well. A bit of a pain, but it works - or at least it does here!

But like everything else in computing, Cyrillic and other non-Western
alphabets are treated as an afterthought at best.

If anybody wishes to contest the above as a load of old cobblers,
please feel free! On the other hand if you want more information,
I'll do my best to oblige.


**********************************************************************
**** Hugh Jenkins                                                 ****
**** Centre for Russian and East European Studies (CREES)         ****
**** The University of Birmingham           Tel: 021-414-6363     ****
**** Birmingham B15 2TT                     Fax: 021-414-3423     ****
**** UK                        Email: H.P.Jenkins at UK.AC.BHAM      ****
**** Note: This mailbox does not honour requests to confirm       ****
****       delivery or reading. To do otherwise can cause havoc   ****
****       with listservers. No offence to others intended!       ****
**********************************************************************