How should Unicode be used under Linux?
Before UTF-8 emerged, Linux users all over the world had to use various different language-specific extensions of ASCII. Most popular were ISO 8859-1 and ISO 8859-2 in Europe, ISO 8859-7 in Greece, KOI-8 / ISO 8859-5 / CP1251 in Russia, EUC and Shift-JIS in Japan, BIG5 in Taiwan, etc. This made the exchange of files difficult and application software had to worry about various small differences between these encodings. Support for these encodings was usually incomplete, untested, and unsatisfactory, because the application developers rarely used all these encodings themselves. Because of these difficulties, major Linux distributors and application developers are now phasing out these older legacy encodings in favour of UTF-8.
Before UTF-8 emerged, Linux users all over the world had to use various different language-specific extensions of ASCII. Most popular were ISO 8859-1 and ISO 8859-2 in Europe, ISO 8859-7 in Greece, KOI-8 / ISO 8859-5 / CP1251 in Russia, EUC and Shift-JIS in Japan, BIG5 in Taiwan, etc. This made the exchange of files difficult and application software had to worry about various small differences between these encodings. Support for these encodings was usually incomplete, untested, and unsatisfactory, because the application developers rarely used all these encodings themselves. Because of these difficulties, major Linux distributors and application developers are now phasing out these older legacy encodings in favour of UTF-8. UTF-8 support has improved dramatically over the last few years and many people now use UTF-8 on a daily basis in • text files (source code, HTML files, email messages, etc.) • file names • standard input and standard output, pipes • environment variables • cut an
Before UTF-8 was around, Linux users in different regions used various extensions of ASCII. Most popular are ISO 8859-1 and ISO 8859-2 in Europe, ISO 8859-7 in Greece, KOI-8 in Russia, EUC and Shift-JIS in Japan, etc. This made the exchange of files difficult and application software had to worry about differences between these encodings. Unicode will eventually replace all these encodings, primarily in the UTF-8 form. UTF-8 will be used in • text files (source code, HTML files, email messages, etc.) • file names • standard input and standard output, pipes • environment variables • cut and paste selection buffers • telnet, modem, and serial port connections to terminal emulators • and in any other places where byte sequences used to be interpreted in ASCII In UTF-8 mode, terminal emulators such as xterm or the Linux console driver transform every keystroke into the corresponding UTF-8 sequence and send it to the stdin of the foreground process. Similarly, any output of a process on std
Before UTF-8 emerged, Linux users all over the world had to use various different language-specific extensions of ASCII. Most popular were ISO 8859-1 and ISO 8859-2 in Europe, ISO 8859-7 in Greece, KOI-8 / ISO 8859-5 / CP1251 in Russia, EUC and Shift-JIS in Japan, BIG5 in Taiwan, etc. This made the exchange of files difficult and application software had to worry about various small differences between these encodings. Support for these encodings was usually incomplete, untested, and unsatisfactory, because the application developers rarely used all these encodings themselves. Because of these difficulties, major Linux distributors and application developers have now started to phase out these older legacy encodings in favour of UTF-8. UTF-8 support has improved dramatically over the last few years and ever more people now use UTF-8 on a daily basis in • text files (source code, HTML files, email messages, etc.) • file names • standard input and standard output, pipes • environment var
Before UTF-8 emerged, Linux users all over the world had to use various different language-specific extensions of ASCII. Most popular were ISO 8859-1 and ISO 8859-2 in Europe, ISO 8859-7 in Greece, KOI-8 / ISO 8859-5 / CP1251 in Russia, EUC and Shift-JIS in Japan, BIG5 in Taiwan, etc. This made the exchange of files difficult and application software had to worry about various small differences between these encodings. Support for these encodings was usually incomplete, untested, and unsatisfactory, because the application developers rarely used all these encodings themselves. Because of these difficulties, the major Linux distributors and application developers now foresee and hope that Unicode will eventually replace all these older legacy encodings, primarily in the UTF-8 form. UTF-8 will be used in • text files (source code, HTML files, email messages, etc.) • file names • standard input and standard output, pipes • environment variables • cut and paste selection buffers • telnet,
