Re: Best encoding for a Japanese web site to deliver?

From: Fabian (lajzar_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 02/03/05 

Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 08:07:17 +0900

bobdc hu kiteb:

> I'm sure there is plenty of discussion of this issue in Japanese; can
> anyone suggest recent good resources in English on the issue of which
> encoding a web server that delivers Japanese content should send to
> browsers?
>
> I get the impression that Shift JIS is still the most popular, but
> that Unicode is gaining. Is there any down side to shipping Unicode,
> other than problems with older browsers? How old do they have to be
> for Unicode to be a problem? Does UTF-16 make more sense than UTF-8,
> or vice versa?
>
> How about EUC-JP, which I see coming from goo.ne.jp, or ISO-2022-JP,
> which nttdocomo.co.jp sends to browsers?

IIRC, anything from MSIE 3 (with its language patch) or netscape 4
upwards can handle unicode. As in all things, social inertia is the main
reason the old standards continue to see use. I' be surprised if current
versions of Lynx-style browsers couldn't handle unicode. One aditional
advantage of unicode seems to be that romaji tends to get displayed as　times
instead of the Japanese font instead. 

-- 
--
Fabian
Visit my website often and for long periods!
http://www.lajzar.co.uk

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