[aprssig] Please, standardize UTF-8 for APRS

[Stephen H. Smith]

Heikki Hannikainen wrote:
>
> I've now set up an UTF-8 message responder. Send an APRS message to 
> the destination callsign UTF-8, and it will respond with 4 messages:
>
> 1. This message is English ASCII text.
> 2. This message is English UTF-8 text.
> 3. Finnish/Scandinavian UTF-8 chars: åäö ÅÄÖ
> 4. Japanese: 日本語 (3 chars)
>
> The first two messages are sort of a joke, since both of those 
> messages are both ASCII and UTF-8. There is no difference.
>
> It's a bit simple, just threw it together quickly, so it doesn't do 
> things like retrying message transmission. It does send message IDs 
> and it does respond with an ack to incoming messages.
>
>   

I've run some quick tests with APRS clients via both the Internet and 
RF.  Results and screen shots are here on my website:

     <http://wa8lmf.net/UTF8_Message_Tests/>


Apparently the North American version of the D700 (don't know about the 
Euro version) has only two character sets embedded -- US 7-bit ASCII and 
some proprietary pre-Unicode/pre-UTF-8 Japanese symbol coding.    The 
German/Scandinavian string was rendered as "Japanese garbage"!