email to/from Russia

[Robert H. Merriman]

While it is true that there are, at least, five coding standards
used on Russian computers, only one, KOI8, is widely used for
email.

KOI8 was specifically designed for use on widely distributed
networks like the Internet where there existed the possibility
that a message would pass through a seven bit mailer and the 8th
bit would be lost in transmission.  Since all Russian coding sys-
tems place the Cyrillic characters in the area above ASCII 128,
where the 8th bit is essential, the loss of the 8th bit would
mean that the character represented by the code would shift 128
possitions lower in the coding scheme.  KOI8 places the Cyrillic
characters exactly 128 characters above the Latin phonetic equi-
valent.  The result is that if a message passes through a 7 bit
host anywhere along its journey between sender and recipient and
the 8th bit is stripped off, every character in the message will
shift 128 characters lower in the scale to the Latin phonetic
equivalent of the original Cyrillic character.  This makes the
message difficult but not impossible to read.  PECTOPAH would
become RESTORAN.  ALL other Cyrillic coding schemes would render
something that was total garbage.

The original reason for this has now become somewhat moot as most
Russian networks now support 8 bit communications as opposed to
the early systems that only supported 7 bit comms.  However, KOI8
has become so firmly entrenched as THE standard for email that I
wouldn't expect it to be replaced anytime soon.

Accordingly, if you use a KOI8 keyboard/screen driver for whatever
platform you happen to be using, you will probably never run into
a problem with email to and from Russia.  You can then communicate
in Russian just as easily as you communicate in English.  There is
no need for additional steps.

Regards,
Bob

At 09:36 PM 12/26/95 EST, you wrote:
>....
>But the most prominent problem is the plethora of "standards" available;
>the parties would have to agreed ahead of time which fonts they would use
>in the encoding - and there are 5 (yes, five) standards to choose from:
>KOI8r, KOI-8 ukrainian, CP-866 (Codepage 866, Alternative PC choice),
>CP-1251 (MS-Windows), and Apple Cyrillic (Macintosh, of course).  Encoding
>two different standards would be next to useless ...
>....

____________________________________________________________________
 Robert H. Merriman       Russian Linguist    merriman at merriman.com
 P. O. Box 219          Science & Technology    (301)725-2006/voice
 Laurel, MD  20725    Business, Economics, Law    (301)725-2007/fax