Numerically encoded Cyrillic e-mails

Fri May 20 20:22:13 UTC 2005

J.W. wrote:

> Ottawa (Canada), Friday 20/5/05 14h55 EDT
>
> Dear SEELANGers,
>
> I'm having a problem reading incoming Cyrillic e-mails from one of my
> correspondents.  In his recent e-mails each Russian letter is replaced
> by "&#" followed by a number between 1040 and 1103 (inclusive).  I've
> managed to figure out the code -- 1040 to 1071 represent capitals in
> Cyrillic alphabetical order, while 1072 to 1103 represent lower-case
> letters, respectively.  But decoding, especially of more than one or two
> sentences, is a slow process indeed.
> ...

The bits with А etc. (the semicolon is part of it) are so-called
"character entities" used in HTML. No idea why this happens, but here's
a quick and easy solution:

1. Copy/paste the following into a plain-text editor. In a Windows
environment, use Notepad and save with an .htm or .html extension. In a
Mac environment, save the file, doing whatever you have to do to tell
the machine it's an HTML file. Keep the file open.

<html><head><title>Cyrillic degarbler</title></head><body>
<!--PASTE GARBLED CYRILLIC BETWEEN THESE LINES--><hr>

<!--PASTE GARBLED CYRILLIC BETWEEN THESE LINES--><hr>
</body></html>

Now, if you open this file in a web browser, you'll see nothing but two
horizontal lines, right? OK, next step:

2. In the plain-text editor you used to create the file, copy/paste the
garbled Cyrillic in the obvious place, save the file again, go back to
your browser and tell it to refresh. Presto, clearly readable Cyrillic.

You can then copy/paste from your browser into your message composition
window for reply purposes, or into any other application.

--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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