[aprssig] Please, standardize UTF-8 for APRS

[Sergej]

wb4apr:
> So the question remains... What would a D7, D700, D710, VX8R,
> Hamhud, Byonics and Argent and Uiview system display if it
> received text in UTF-8?

This radios will OK display English chars, as its the same in UTF-8
like in normal US-ASCII. Other regional subsets will be possible if
manufacturers will be update firmware to support it.

About UI-VIEW - its looks not to be hard write plug-in in Visual Basic
that will correct display/type messages in regional charsets according
UTF-8 encoding in extra window. Again, English text will be still OK
display.

About message length limitation - its should no problem up to 230-240 for
messaging in PC based APRS clients. (paclen in AX.25 max=256)
Even if dual byte per char encoding will be used for UTF-8 regional
chars its will be possible type up to 110 regional chars - quite enough
for SMS'ing?!

New hardware devices should extend message length too. But of course
all APRS clients should still include option to limit message to 70 chars
to be backward compatible with whole radios/hardware (D7, D700 etc)

73, Sergej
uz2hz