[aprssig] Unicode in APRS messages

[SARTrack Admin]

I am currently adding internationalisation to my SARTrack program ( 
http://www.sartrack.co.nz ), and have volunteers in various countries 
doing translations for me.

Up to this point, I never attempted to use Unicode for APRS messaging 
during transfer via APRS servers.

I have now added UTF8 encoding/decoding to the TCP interface... And this 
works perfectly when I use my own program, while testing on a 'aprsc' 
based server. Russian and other languages with 'funny' characters now 
come out correctly on the other side.

However, when I tested it with the APRS client 'AGWTracker', garbage 
came out.

I would like to know how other APRS clients deal with this issue, and 
what Encoding (if any) is being used to transfer Unicode APRS packets 
over TCPIP.
And how this type of data is dealt with, when it must be transfered over 
the radio, as this is obviousely ASCII/ANSI based...

Thanks,
Bart ZL4FOX / PA2FOX

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SARTrack Developer and CEO