presnick(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com (Pete Resnick) writes:
1. If you (as a user) are only interested in one character set, it doesn't
matter to you what other character sets exist.
2. If you (as a user) are only going to receive mail which contains
characters from that character set, then you (again, as the user) don't
need any label in the message to tell what it is.
3. ISO 2022 contains all of the different kinds of characters that you (as
a user) want to use, whatever character set you are interested in, so ISO
2022 is all you really need.
4. If you (as a MUA) are only expecting ISO 2022, then you don't need any
labeling to tell you what character sets are in the message.
It seems that you don't know what ISO2022 is. It is a
method of encoding MANY character sets. Japanese are using
it to encode ASCII, JISX0201 and JISX0208 for more than 10
years. We have started to use ISO2022 in some news group of
`fj' to encode more character sets, i.e. ASCII, ISO8859-1,
ISO8859-7(Greek), JISX0201, JISX0208, JISX0212,
GB2312(Chinese), and KSC5601(Korean).
(b) The resource load on an MUA to display different glyphs is a great deal
lighter if you have a label which says "everything to follow is in ISO
8859-1". Then you only have to load up fonts for 8859-1. If you are told
If you don't have ISO8859-1 font, what you'll do. Don't
display anything? Perhaps no. You'll try to display at
least ASCII correctly. Even if you have ISO8859-1 font, it
not wise to load ISO8859-1 font before you really encounter
ISO8859-1 chars because there's a possibility of the text
not including any ISO8859-1 chars.
Then, how labeling helps you?
---
Ken'ichi HANDA
handa(_at_)etl(_dot_)go(_dot_)jp