[aprssig] Please, standardize UTF-8 for APRS

[Matti Aarnio]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 07:33:06AM -0400, Bob Snyder wrote:
> Sure. English is the default common language that should always be an
> option for pilots and ATC (ATC is required to know English as well as
> any local languages, and pilots on international flights must either
> know either the local languages where they're flying or English).
> However, if you go and listen to Montréal Approach on LiveATC
> (http://www.liveatc.net/search/?icao=cyul) as an example, you'll hear
> the communications flip between French and English pretty regularly,
> it's not just English.
> 
> Actually not too different than ham radio. English tends to be the
> lingua franca for QSOs between different countries/languages, but
> within a country, the local language is used. This discussion seems to
> be a push to make APRS relevant for local communications, something
> APRS was designed to do well.

You should hear sometimes VHF/UHF tests in Scandinavia..  I live near
Helsinki, and I do hear regularly: Russian, Estonia, Finnish, Swedish,
and Engrish in various ways mis-pronounced.  I bet tests around the
North Sea (Britain / Norway / Sweden / Denmark / Germany / Belgium /
Netherlands / France) have equally interesting voice mixes.

> If modifying the standard to allow UTF-8 doesn't impact communications
> in English-speaking countries, I don't personally see a huge issue
> with it, even if the D700 and friends display garbage when trying to
> interpret a multi-byte character.

When I have time, I will make a messsaging robot with which you can try
to see example byte sequences from RFC 3629 (Internet STD 63), alias:

      UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3629.txt

Bob B. should very least read the abstract of that standard.
Also introduction should be illuminating.

All existing systems will fail to correctly show characters that are
outside US-ASCII range.  Will they fail so badly as to break themselves
(software crash or something), is another issue.


Hmm..  Those sample sequences are a bit limited - only CJK group present.
More are needed.   I will use variations of Hessu's email samples.
Also message lengths need variational tests.


> Bob N2KGO

73 de Matti, OH2MQK