translation query (Windows 1251) & Decoding problem

[Elena Levintova]

Edward M Dumanis wrote:

> > is translated as "hmbeqrhvhnmm{i (sometimes *qnbleqrm{i* or *bg`hlm{i*)
> > tnmd g`jp{rncn rho`"
>
> Here, I would like to ask if somebody can explain to me why I see Cyrillic
> here only as a meaningless combination of Cyrillic letters.
>
> I use Netscape browser 4.03.
> Encodings Cyrillic (Windows-1251), Cyrillic (ISO-8859-5) and Cyrillic
> (KOI8-R) give the same display of the Cyrillic letters which makes me
> suspicious that the Encoding does not work properly.
> Any idea on how to solve this problem?
> I had the same problem many times before.
> Sometimes everything is displayed correctly, and sometimes it is not.
>
> Hope somebody has a clue.
>
> Edward Dumanis <dumanis at acsu.buffalo.edu>

That has been puzzling me for months!!!
I am using Netscape. Communicator 4.04 . What I do when I see Cyrillic as
 unreadable: besides the encodings you mention I also try  Central
European (Windows 1250). It worked in this particular case.
I remember also that occasionally Western (ISO-8859-1) or Central European
 (ISO-8859-2) worked. So if I have a problem reading Russian in the
body of a message I receive, I just try these 6 encodings, one by one, until
 something works. Or else if Cyrillic text looks like a succession
of accented vowels, I can cut and paste it into a Word document, and then
 convert it into one of my Cyrillic fonts.
Hope this helps, and I would appreciate other tips on how to handle this,
 especially what to tell people who cannot read my messages in
Russian? If somebody uses Internet Explorer, for example, what encoding should I
 use for them to read my Russian?