CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

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Chapter 4: Encoding Methods

Charset designatorsTable 4-79.

Encoding Ocial charset designator Preferred charset designator

UTF-16LE UTF-16LE same

UTF-32 UTF-32 same

UTF-32BE UTF-32BE same

UTF-32LE UTF-32LE same

UCS-2 ISO-10646-UCS-2 same

UCS-4 ISO-10646-UCS-4 same

In order to be compatible with older or poorly implemented soware, it is important to

maintain an aliasing mechanism that eectively maps several known charset designa-

tions to the preferred one. e charset registry maintains known aliases for each charset

designator.

Some charset designations can withstand the test of time, and others cannot. For example,

consider Korean, for which there are two camps when it comes to charset designations.

One camp prefers to use the designation “KS_C_5601-1987” for EUC-KR encoding. e

other camp simply prefers to use “EUC-KR” for EUC-KR encoding. In case it is not obvi-

ous, I belong to the latter camp. In 1998, all KS character set standards changed designa-

tion. For example, KS C 5601-1992 became KS X 1001:1992 and is now KS X 1001:2004.

As you can clearly see, the use of “KS_C_5601-1987” as a charset designator did not with-

stand the test of time. However, the use of “EUC-KR” is still completely valid and still

preferred, and clearly has withstood the test of time.

Code Pages

In the context of IBM and Microso documentation, there is oen mention of a Code

Page. A Code Page is ...