translation query (Windows 1251) & Decoding problem

[Edward M Dumanis]

On Sat, 2 Jan 1999, Ernest Sjogren wrote:

> At 11:42 AM 1/2/99 -0500, you wrote:
> >On Fri, 1 Jan 1999, Alexander Ushakov wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> >> is translated as "èíâåñòèöèîííûé (sometimes *ñîâìåñòíûé* or *âçàèìíûé*)
> >> ôîíä çàêðûòîãî òèïà"
> >
> >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.
> >
> This codepage is Win-1251, not KOI-8.  It reads fine in Eudora Lite w/
> Win-1251.
> 
> >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 don't use Netscape to read mail, but try, after you have set your browser
> to Win-1251 encoding:
> * reloading the page,
> * going to another page, then going to advanced properties and clearing
> everything (cache and the other option, disk?), and then reloading the
> desired page,
> * (this one is doubtful) going to the "appearance" tab in the "Display"
> icon in "System Settings" and setting your system font to a Win-1251 font,
> * browsing with IE -- sometimes they read pages better than Netscape does,
> and vice versa.
> 
> I hope one of these does the trick.  If I've been too cryptic, email me for
> fuller directions (I'm on my way out the door, you see).  I'll bet we can
> figure out something to remedy the situation.
> 
> -- Ernie Sjogren
> 
Thank you very much for your suggestions.
Unfortunately, none of the suggested tricks with the Netscape version
worked. I strongly suspect that it is a bug in the Netscape Communicator,
version 4.06.  I do not know if later versions have the same problem.
Unfortunately, in their attempt to make the life easier for us, I think,
Netscape, Inc. removed all the options that existed in version 2.0 where
we could define our own mapping in the Preference section, and, thus, all
the possibilities to fix this problem the way I knew disappeared.
The only suggestion of those that you recommended which worked in this
situation was to read it in the MS Internet Explorer 4.0, and it worked
with encoding that they call Cyrillic Alphabet (Windows), and which I
suspect is actually Code page 1251.
Comparing with all other encodings, I conclude that Netscape, by mistake,
mapped all their Cyrillic Encodings as KOI8-R, and this is the reason that
they do not work.
It's a pity but I am quite sure that this is the root of the problem, and
unless we have some kind of instructions on how to fix this bug, or unless
they provide us with a patch to fix it, we are stuck.
It is really quite annoying to switch between browsers in order to read
different messages. It seems that my faith in Netscape is fading now.

Edward Dumanis <dumanis at acsu.buffalo.edu>