RE: Windows Code Pages 932, 936, 949 and 950

[Shawn Steele <Shawn.Steele@microsoft.com>]

Some of the code pages (I'd have to check which ones) respond to x-windows-nnn instead of windows-nnn in the .NET framework, which is similar to MLang, which is what IE uses to map names to actual code pages.
 
IMHO it would be worth using only the names that MLang or .Net (or IE) supports for aliasing windows code page names.  Our names aren't consistent and registering a superset of the patterns as aliases would probably lead to trouble.  
 
One reason I'd recommend not registering aliases that Microsoft products don't actually recognize for Microsoft code pages is that it is unlikely that we'd start responding to "new" names since that might cause user confusion and compatibility problems.
 
If it would help I can provide a list of the names and aliases that we actually use for the various code pages, and names that we don't recognize but have been I know they've been referred to (like CP1252).
 
- Shawn

________________________________

From: Erik van der Poel [mailto:erikv@google.com]
Sent: Thu 11/2/2006 9:55 PM
To: ietf-charsets@iana.org
Cc: Mike Ksar
Subject: Re: Windows Code Pages 932, 936, 949 and 950



But of course windows-936 is already registered, as an alias of gbk.

E.

On 11/2/06, Erik van der Poel <erikv@google.com> wrote:
> It turns out that MSIE does not support the following charset names:
>
> windows-932
> windows-936
> windows-949
> windows-950
>
> Of course, MSIE does support those code pages, but the most commonly
> used names for those code pages in MSIE are shift_jis, gb2312, euc-kr
> and big5, respectively.
>
> If we are emphatic about cp1252 not being an alias for windows-1252
> for interoperability reasons, then for the same reasons, we should not
> register windows-932, windows-936, windows-949 and windows-950.
>
> (Windows-874 is supported by MSIE, so it will probably be OK to
> register this one.)
>
> Erik
>