KOI8-R - Russian Net Character Set  

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DISCLAIMER: All material here are a result of my personal independent research and other peoples contributions, any company I am with is not responsible for them.

Ache.

This page at http://www.nagual.ru/~ache/koi8.html (original site in Moscow, Russia) is mirrored, use a near-by mirror for faster access.

Following mirrors updated daily (I hope):

• Moscow, Russia by Relcom Co.
• Kharkov, Ukraine by ITL Co.
• Virginia, USA by SovInformBureau

If you have some problems with your DNS and can't login to ftp.relcom.ru as a result, try use WWW Kiarchive server (WWW interface to FTP archive) instead.

• What is KOI8-R?
  • Main KOI8-R standard documents.
• KOI8-R Visualized (browsers checking).
• How to create Russian HTML documents in KOI8-R.
  • Document only method, no server modification required.
  • Method which requires HTTP daemon actions.
  • Apache HTTPD Tuning for Several Character Sets.
  • Browsers which support this specification.
• Microsoft Windows v3.* Stuff.
  • How to setup Win3.11 for KOI8-R properly.
  • Fonts.
  • Keyboard Switchers.
  • KOI8-R Keyboard Descriptions for Switchers.
  • Applicable Software.
  • Software Tuning.
• Microsoft Windows 95 Stuff.
  • How to setup Win95 for KOI8-R properly.
  • Fonts.
  • Keyboard Setup.
  • Applicable Software.
  • Software Tuning.
• X-Windows Stuff.
  • Fonts.
  • Locales.
  • Keyboard.
  • Software Tuning.
• DOS Stuff.
  • Keyboard & Screen Drivers.
  • Charset Converters.
  • Applicable Software.
  • Software Tuning.
• UNIX Stuff.
  • Fonts & Converters.
  • Keyboard & Screen Drivers.
  • Charset Converters.
  • Locales.
  • Applicable Software.
  • Software Tuning.
• Macintosh Stuff.
  • Keyboard & Screen Drivers.
  • Software Tuning.
• Miscellaneous.
• Contacts.
• Donations.

KOI8-R is a living de-facto standard of Internet Mail/News exchange, WWW browsing and other interactive services in Russian spread through the whole of ex-SU territory at least. It was designed for Russian/English languages only and covers only Russian Cyrillic characters, so if you seeking Ukrainian, Belorussian, etc. Cyrillic characters, try ISO-IR-111 from ECMA registry instead, it matches KOI8-R in common (letters) area.

Main KOI8-R standard documents:

• Registration of a Cyrillic Character Set, KOI8-R standard definition (RFC1489)
• KOI8-R description in POSIX WG15 charset collection
• ASSIGNED NUMBERS, KOI8-R registration as official MIME name (RFC1700)
• Fresh Registered Charsets List from IANA, KOI8-R is there too
• IBM recently registered KOI8-R charset as Code Page 878.

Upper half of KOI8-R code table: 80h - FFh

You can check how well your browser support KOI8-R. Two tables below must match the table above.

Your Fixed Font: 80h - FFh

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
8	─	│	┌	┐	└	┘	├	┤	┬	┴	┼	▀	▄	█	▌	▐
9	░	▒	▓	⌠	■	∙	√	≈	≤	≥		⌡	°	²	·	÷
A	═	║	╒	ё	╓	╔	╕	╖	╗	╘	╙	╚	й	╜	Й	╞
B	╟	╠	╡	Ё	╢	╣	╤	╥	╦	╧	╨	╩	╪	╫	╬	©
C	Н	п	я	Ф	т	у	Д	с	Е	ь	ы	з	ш	э	щ	ч
D	ъ	О	Ю	А	Б	Ц	ж	р	Л	К	в	Х	М	И	Г	Й
E	н	╟	╠	ф	╢	╣	д	Ё	е	╦	╧	╨	╩	╪	╫	╬
F	©	о	ю	а	б	ц	╤	╡	л	к	╥	х	м	и	г	й

Your Proportional Font: 80h - FFh

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
8	─	│	┌	┐	└	┘	├	┤	┬	┴	┼	▀	▄	█	▌	▐
9	░	▒	▓	⌠	■	∙	√	≈	≤	≥		⌡	°	²	·	÷
A	═	║	╒	ё	╓	╔	╕	╖	╗	╘	╙	╚	й	╜	Й	╞
B	╟	╠	╡	Ё	╢	╣	╤	╥	╦	╧	╨	╩	╪	╫	╬	©
C	Н	п	я	Ф	т	у	Д	с	Е	ь	ы	з	ш	э	щ	ч
D	ъ	О	Ю	А	Б	Ц	ж	р	Л	К	в	Х	М	И	Г	Й
E	н	╟	╠	ф	╢	╣	д	Ё	е	╦	╧	╨	╩	╪	╫	╬
F	©	о	ю	а	б	ц	╤	╡	л	к	╥	х	м	и	г	й

HTML Special Characters

©	Copyright sign
	Non-breaking space
®	Registered sign
­	Soft hyphen
™	Trade mark sign
	List bullets

Check your browser display HTML special characters (symbolic names) using KOI8-R encoding and not ISO8859-1 encoding. If you see wrong characters in this table and your font is true KOI8-R, report this bug to your browser development team.

Form input test, button names must be in KOI8-R. If your browser asks file downloading instead of page displaying, it can't handle charset= in HTTP header.

Standard Russian keyboard layout except Ё/ё letters (on ~/` key) and special characters from upper keys row.

Check variables your browser passes to HTTPD using this

CGI Test Script

If your browser asks file downloading instead of page displaying, it can't handle charset= in HTTP header. If your browser is configured for Russian language properly (using standards), you'll have KOI8-R in HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET field. For example:

HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET = KOI8-R, ISO-8859-1; q=0.1

Don't forget to put ACCEPT-CHARSET="KOI8-R, US-ASCII" attribute into your <FORM> tag. General syntax of this attribute is the same as in HTTP Accept-Charset header field (see below) but without any q= quality parameters. This attribute affects all <INPUT> elements of the <FORM>. If you want different charset for each <INPUT> element, you must use ENCTYPE=multipart/form-data form, check Form-based File Upload in HTML (RFC 1867) for more info.

See also:

• W3C Internationalization / Localization
• A world-wide World Wide Web
• Internationalization of the Hypertext Markup Language IETF Draft 04
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1 IETF Draft 06
• Proposed Content Negotiation Definitions for HTTP/1.1 Holtman Draft
• Form-based File Upload in HTML (RFC 1867)
• Tags for the Identification of Languages (RFC 1766)
• Introducing HTML 3.2
• HTML 3.0
• Non-western Character sets, Languages and Writing Systems

You need insert into the <HEAD> section of your document the following statement (as early as possible):

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=KOI8-R">

This method assumes that the client understands HTML 3.0 language and charset specifications. It assumes that the client understands KOI8-R charset too, i.e. the documents have fixed charset in this case and no on-the-fly document encoding conversion is possible.

Method which requires HTTP daemon actions

According to Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1 IETF Draft 06, client may request the document character set by using Accept-Charset header field. The example

Accept-Charset: koi8-r, windows-1251; q=0.8

If no Accept-Charset field is given, any character set is acceptable. In this case you can't tell the server that you use KOI8-R charset and it can feed you with, say CP1251.

The server uses Content-Type answer field to inform the client about document settings. For example

Content-Type: text/html; charset=koi8-r

I run Apache HTTPD on this site, you can check its status to see its work in progress.

If you add

"text/html; charset=koi8-r"    html8
"text/html; charset=windows-1251"    htmlw

As an alternative, you can add

AddType "text/html; charset=koi8-r" .html8
AddType "text/html; charset=windows-1251" .htmlw

The server is bound to use charset parameter; if document character set is not listed in Accept-Charset, the server should respond with the 406 (none acceptable) status code.

I made Apache v1.1.1 patch which implements dynamic choosing of proper document charset via Apache .var feature. Here is an example: a.var file (try it) which assumes MIME types and file extensions from examples above. If your WWW client generates proper Accept-Charset field, this example automatically chooses document in correct charset. When your WWW client accepts both KOI8-R and CP1251, KOI8-R document will be chosen with 10% comprehension.

URI: a; vary="type"

URI: a.html8
Content-Type: text/html; charset=koi8-r; qc=0.1

URI: a.htmlw
Content-Type: text/html; charset=windows-1251

It is covenient to store documents in the single charset, converting them on the fly. Sometimes it is possible to load conversion modules directly into HTTPD, but it is very implementation dependent and may require server re-building, so CGI scripts looks like more general solution here. In my previous example instead of two files in different charsets there can be one CGI script with charset passed as an argument which convert single file according to it. For example you can use trans Character Encoding Converter Generator Package to convert between various Russian charsets via UNICODE.

This method requires correct Accept-... fields coming from clients. Most of clients currently don't bother to do it. My patch have workaround for such clients: it uses charset guessing mechanism based on User-Agent header field pattern. Now you can put something like

GuessCharset "Mozilla/* (X11;*" koi8-r

Additionly, my patch helps to maintain correct charset in <FORM> input. Next method works in two ways: as standard says and as workaround for current bad practice.

In your HTML document:

1. Use ACCEPT-CHARSET attribute with <INPUT> and <TEXTAREA> tags as I18N draft says, it must contain comma separated list of charsets acceptable by server (in Accept-Charset header field format but without quality parameters).
2. Use POST method, it is impossible to determine charset for GET method arguments.

In your CGI script:

1. Correct client must supply charset=name attribute in Content-Type header field. For example:
   

   Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=KOI8-R
   

   
   

   Value of this header field is accessible in CGI script via CONTENT_TYPE CGI variable. You can check how your browser do it using form input test. If a charset is present there, extract it and pass as an argument to your external document charset converter.

   Another standard variant is using ENCTYPE=multipart/form-data, but in this case your client must accompany each part of multipart message with correct charset=name in Content-Type field. I don't know any client which do it, so try to avoid this ENCTYPE.

2. If charset not present, get it from ACCEPT_CHARSET CGI variable (remember, it contains charset guessed by User-Agent header field, my patch does it) and pass it to charset converter.
   WARNING: it works only for single charset in ACCEPT_CHARSET variable. I don't know (yet) what to do when multiply charsets are present there.

If you don't run Apache HTTPD with my patch, you need to directly ask somewhere in your page about preferred client charset.

Browsers which support this specifications:

• Lynx 2.5 (alphanumeric browser)

• Netscape 2.02 understands it (you can check it via View|Document Info). When this version notices charset specified (by <META> tag or in HTTP header), it first tries to find a font with appropriate encoding, and if this fails, it assumes ISO-8859-1 charset. The procedure of finding the right font is unclear for me, but I map ISO-8859-1 charset to KOI8-R fonts in my X11 Netscape settings and solve the problem this way. For MS-Windows version don't forget to change Latin1 fonts to KOI8-R ones too as I say in Win3.* Netscape tunings.

  Netscape v3.0b5a (Unix, MS-Windows) understand it in the right way (mostly as result of my discussion with Netscape Team), i.e. shows document using KOI8-R font.

  Frank Tang from the Netscape Team tell me about their plans of implementing Accept-Charset field and KOI8-R charset support into after-Atlas Netscape releases.

Microsoft Windows v3.* Stuff

• True way to teach Win3.11 about KOI8-R.
• Notes about decode table (CP1251 <-> KOI8-R) & proxy methods.

After downloading/unzipping add them using standard Windows procedure, i.e. via Control Panel|Fonts.

• Neccessary for WWW browsing:
  • Bukinist (times-like) truetype font.
  • Kurier (courier-like) truetype font.
• WWW alternatives:
  • Times truetype font. Normal variation only.
• Fixed System & Terminal Fonts:
  • System fonts.
• Other fonts:
  • Script-like truetype font.
  • Arial-like truetype font.
  • Leeds truetype font. Normal variation only.
  • Third Roman truetype font. Normal variation only.
  • Fixed/Proportional fonts.

• WinKey 1.0, serve DOS too
• CyrWin 3.0
• CyrWin 3.1 demo

ATTENTION: All keyboard switchers mentioned here (except WinKey) have CP1251 character set by default, not KOI8-R! You need download and install corresponding keyboard descriptions from below in addition to fonts from above to tune the switchers for KOI8-R.

Recommended: ParaWin 2.0 or CyrWin 4.0 (better), both commercial.

You can find ParaWin 2.0 on russian pirate CD, title: аячЮщьз ъЮчсЮпээ тшО MICROSOFT WINDOWS, volume #1. You can find CyrWin 4.0 on the volume #3 of the same same CD line.

CyrWin 4.0 is able to switch font groups in addition to keyboards.

KOI8-R Keyboard Descriptions for Switchers:

• ParaWin keyboard
• CyrWin keyboard
• WinKey keyboard, yet one variant

• Netscape 3.0b5a (16bit) (knows about KOI8-R, KOI8-R fonts required)
  See also How to setup Netscape (Win3.*) to use KOI8-R fonts
• WinVN Beta (supports MIME attachments)
  See also WinVN KOI8-R setup description and WinVN Newsreader Home Page.
• News Xpress (MIME attachments not supported)
  Just change all fonts to KOI8-R ones. See also News Xpress Manual Page.
• NetTerm Beta dialup/telnet/zmodem/ftp server/finger & more (support VT100 semigraphics)
• EWAN Telnet (support VT100 semigraphics)
  It works well with KOI8-R fonts and input, just change Options.
• E-mail Connection
  Just change all fonts to KOI8-R ones. WARNING: you'll have wrong GMT offset for Moscow timezone in Date header field and EMC encode Russian text to quoted-printable form when sending attachments, bug EMC Support for it.

• How to setup WinVN news agent for KOI8-R
• How to setup Netscape (Win3.*) to use KOI8-R fonts
• How to setup NCSA Mosaic 2.x to use KOI8-R fonts
• How to fix Eudora Mail Agent for KOI8-R MIME charset
• MS Word macro
  Transliterate cyrillic characters from CP1251 or KOI8-R standards to latin characters.

Microsoft Windows 95 Stuff

For Win95 Standard Edition you need to make sure you installed Multilanguage Support. Go to Control Panel|Add/Remove Programs, check the Windows Setup tab and make sure MultiLanguage Support is checked. (It is not included with the diskette version of Win95, so if you installed from diskettes, download MutliLanguage Support from Microsoft). Then choose Russian in Control Panel|Regional Setting.

For Win95 Russian Edition you don't need Multilanguage support.

It seems that Win95 have more strict requirements to the fonts, it expect all font varations (i.e. Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) must exists and fonts with Normal variation only display blanks for missing variations.

If you can add something valuable to this section, please, drop me a note.

How to setup Win95 for KOI8-R properly:

• True way to teach Win95 about KOI8-R.
• Notes about decode table (CP1251 <-> KOI8-R) & proxy methods.

• If you are experienced enough, you don't need to install any additional fonts for programs wich support font Script (Win95 Standard Edition) or ╫пячЮ Аьэрчшчр (Win95 Russian Edition) choosing ability, just follow my step-by-step instructions. In this case you can use new improved versions of standard Win95 fonts (Arial, Courier and Times) located at Free Truetype Windows Fonts page as KOI8-R fonts too.

• If you can't fully understand instructions above or use programs without font Script (Win95 Standard Edition) or ╫пячЮ Аьэрчшчр (Win95 Russian Edition) choosing ability, install Win3.* KOI8-R fonts.

BTW, there is useful tool to display additional .TTF font properties including character set and code pages into font properties dialog box, check Windows 95 font properties extension.

Keyboard Setup:

NOTE: Polish language choosed in the examples below, but any Central European language can be choosed instead to assotiate this keyboard to hacked Central European code page, see hack description for details.

For Win95 Standard Edition:

Copy this KOI8-R keyboard description to \Windows\System directory and use this Registry addition (feed it to Regedit.exe) to add KOI8-R keyboard to valid keyboards list.

If you want an experiment, try to use KOI8-R keyboard description for Win95 Russian Edition instead, maybe it will work better (I don't test it personally). Please, report me any results.

Press Control Panel|Keyboard|Language|Add and add Polish language. Choose it and press Poperties, then choose Russian (KOI8-R) in Keyboard Layout menu. Funally, you'll have following picture into Installed keyboard languages and layouts table:

En English (United States)       United States Pl Polish Russian (KOI8-R) Ru Russian Russian

Check in Enable indicator on taskbar box and choose one of Switch languages methods.

For Win95 Russian Edition:

Copy this KOI8-R keyboard description to \Windows\System directory and use this Registry addition (feed it to Regedit.exe) to add KOI8-R keyboard to valid keyboards list. Press ©пщушЛ ЦъЮпршущьО|╨шпрьпБЦЮп|овКз|╢чяпрьБЛ... and add ©чшЛАзьы language. Choose it and press арчыАБрп, then choose юЦААзпО (KOI8-R) in юпАзшптзп menu. Funally, you'll have following picture into цАБпщчршущщКу ОвКзь ь ЮпАзшптзь зшпрьпБЦЮК table:

En ╟щсшьыАзьы (ах╟)              ах╟ Pl ©чшЛАзьы юЦААзпО (KOI8-R) Ru юЦААзьы юЦААзпО

Check in ╡КруАБь ьщтьзпБчЮ box and choose one of ачГуБпщьО зшпрьХ тшО ъуЮузшНГущьО ЮпАзшптзь methods.

KNOWN PROBLEMS: Win95 keyboard switch method have serious problems as designed. The problem list:

1. Win95 implements per-application keyboard switcher, not for all aplications at once.
2. If HotKey switching does not work, you can use menu switching (from lower right corner: En - Ru - Pl) or temporary go to parent (sic!) window, switch there and return back.
3. If your keyboard gets stuck after switching to Russian mode, you need to temporarily go to parent window and return back.
4. If you can't reenter Russian mode again in the current window, you need to temporarily go to parent window, switch to Russian mode there and return back. If it not help, open yet another window in the same program and try to switch keyboard there, then return to original window.

• International Extensions for Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0 (adds KOI8-R handling to Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0, no KOI8-R fonts required)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0b1 supports KOI8-R too, but worse than International Extensions: KOI8-R is approximated by CP1251 and special characters (f.e. Copyright character or non-breaking space) have ISO8859-1 codes instead of KOI8-R codes. Bug Microsoft IE Development Team.
• Netscape 3.0b5a (32bit) (knows about KOI8-R, KOI8-R fonts or my GDI.EXE KOI8-R fix required)
  See also How to setup Netscape (Win95) to use KOI8-R fonts
• News Xpress (MIME attachments supported, even knows about KOI8-R charset)
  Just change all fonts to KOI8-R ones and MIME charset name to KOI8-R. See also News Xpress Manual Page.
• WinVN Beta (MIME attachments supported)
  See also WinVN KOI8-R setup description and WinVN Newsreader Home Page.
• NetTerm Beta dialup/telnet/zmodem/ftp server/finger & more (support VT100 semigraphics)

• Local proxy CP1251 <-> KOI8-R conversion for selected ports (you don't need KOI8-R fonts in this case, it uses CP1251 fonts that come with Win95, see my notes about decode tables & proxy methods).
• How to adjust MS Exchange for KOI8-R (you don't need KOI8-R fonts in this case, but see my notes about decode tables & proxy methods).
• How to setup WinVN news agent for KOI8-R
• How to fix Eudora Mail Agent for KOI8-R MIME charset
• How to setup Netscape (Win95) to use KOI8-R fonts
• How to setup NCSA Mosaic 2.x to use KOI8-R fonts

X-Windows Stuff

• Cronyx KOI8-R fonts set for X11R5/X11R6.
  WARNING: This fonts NOT fully implement KOI8-R charset according to RFC 1489, you can trust only letters area excepting Ё and ё letters. Feel free to fix them and contribute back to me, you can download sources of this fonts, if you are interested.

  Usual place for this fonts is /usr/{X386,X11R6,...}/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic directory but if you can't modify system directories, just place them into any directory. You need to check that this directory is first in your FontPath: look into /etc/XF86Config (or similar config file in your X11 variant) if you install them into system directory or issue

  xset +fp fonts_dir

  to add them locally. Use

  xset q

  to check they are first in FontPath.

• X11R5 NLS workaround.
  Place it into /usr/{X386,X11R6,...}/lib/X11/nls. It is needed for Netscape's Cut & Paste works for russian text. If you can't modify system directories, put it into any directory then set XNLSPATH environment variable to this directory.
• X11R6 Locale.
  Place it into /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale.

Place XFree86 3.1.2 keyboard mapping table into /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap, then switch to/from russian (KOI8-R) keyboard via CapsLock (after X (re)started). I assume that you use default xinitrc or your $HOME/.xinitrc picks .Xmodmap too. If it doesn't work for you, enter xmodmap /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap directly. If you can't modify system directories, just place the file into any directory and call xmodmap there. If you are under X86 OpenWindows, try X86 OpenWindows keyboard mapping table instead.

WARNING: Control keys don't work when russian mode is active, it is a known bug. Drop me a note, if you know, how to fix it.

Software Tuning:

• How to setup Netscape to use KOI8-R fonts
• How to setup NCSA Mosaic to use KOI8-R fonts:
  add this X-resources description to your $HOME/.Xdefaults file. Programmers can also look at Multi-Localization Enhancement of NCSA Mosaic for X patch. See also MS-Windows Mosaic tuning.
• KOI8-R fonts and keyboard map table for Sun OpenWindows

• R - driver written by V. Kurland can switch between KOI8-R and CP866 via HotKey.

• trans Character Encoding Converter Generator Package (sources)
  converts between most of Russian encodings via UNICODE
• CP866 <-> KOI8-R point-to-point charsets converter, executables.
• C source code of converter above.

• UUPC/@ - uucp transfer protocol host/client & mail subsystem

• CP866 <-> KOI8-R point-to-point decode table for Telemate
• CP866 <-> KOI8-R point-to-point decode table for Terminator 2
• CP866 <-> KOI8-R point-to-point decode table for Telix

• Downloadable VT200/VT300 KOI8 fonts

• FreeBSD already have KOI8-R screen/keyboard setup as distributed.
• KOI8-R fonts and keyboard map table for Sun OpenWindows If you are under X86 OpenWindows, try X86 OpenWindows keyboard mapping table instead.
• KOI8-R screen/keyboard setup for Interactive Unix
• KOI8-R screen/keyboard setup for SCO Unix
• KOI8-R screen/keyboard setup for Xenix

• trans Character Encoding Converter Generator Package converts between most of Russian encodings via UNICODE
• CP866 <-> KOI8-R point-to-point charsets converter

• FreeBSD already have KOI8-R locale as distributed
• KOI8-R locale sources for Linux

• Most of FreeBSD system utilities already understands KOI8-R.
• Lynx 2.5 (alphanumeric browser).
• ELM-2.4ME+ - enhanced Elm Mail Agent version, MIME, PGP, remailers added.
• Enhanced version of Berkley Mail Agent, with russian diagnostics.

• How to tune various applications ported to FreeBSD for KOI8-R.
• Emacs KOI8-R configuration file

I don't have Mac available, so can't comment following materials... Follow MacOS and KOI8-R link for more info.

Keyboard & Screen Drivers:

• Macintosh KOI8-R .TTF & .PS fonts and keyboard layout

• VersaTerm PRO russification kit (Mac acts as terminal for main host)

• Russian (KOI8-R) PGP translation.
• TEX russification kit (KOI8-R encoding)

• Send your impressions, corrections and ideas by E-Mail to: Andrey A. Chernov.
  Please, correct my English, if you find something written inaccurately.

• My Guestbook (visit it)

• On-line availability

• My Home Page

Software russification and this page maintaining eats my time and resources without any reward... If you find this stuff useful and offer some money donation, it allows me to intensify my efforts. E-Mail me in this case to discuss donation ways.

There have been visitors to this page since Nov 18, 1995.

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Copyright © 1995-96 by Andrey A. Chernov, Moscow, Russia.