Request for Comments: *****

This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Introduction

Though the proposed character set "KOI8-U" is not currently an international standard, there is large Internet user community (including Ukraine and worldwide Ukrainian speaking community) supporting it.
"KOI8-RU" is de-facto standard accepted by all Ukrainian community in the Internet and unofficially published at many sites (F.E., ftp://ftp.ua.net/pub/info/encodings/koi8-u/ukr_chars_in_koi8-u_and_others.txt; ftp://ftp.gu.kiev.ua/pub/koi8-u/ukr_chars_in_koi8-u_and_others.txt; http://cad.ntu-kpi.kiev.ua/~demch/multiling/KOI8-U.html).

Ukrainian language is the 20th among the world's languages (http:// www.isoc.org:8080/langues/iso639.htm) and supported not only in Ukraine as national state but in many Ukrainian communities over the world.

KOI8-U should be registered to support and facilitate general and cultural infromation content. Support of Ukrainian language in new software product is restrained by absent of oficially registered and widely published de-facto used Ukrainian charset.

One of the problem now is that all old codepages ISO-IR-111, ISO 8859-5 doesn't include new Ukr. letter KGE (with upturn). Now it's registered in UNICODE 2.0.14 as Cyrillic GHE with upturn (0490 - capital, 0491 - small). It is used in more than 25 ukrainian words and carry in some cases specific national features.

New standard have to state specifics of this letter that sounds as KGE in differnce of ordinary letter G that sounds as GHE. It's from linguistical research as long as from the time of it's introduction in 1818, reintroduction in 1924 and rehabilitation (after Stalin's linguistical researches) in 1992. So, such correction in spelling/transliteration of this letter have to be made in proposed and other standards.

MIME character set name: koi8-u

Published specification:

This standard is unpublished but based on several published standards: first of all, RFC1489 (it is fully complaint in all russian letters), ISO 8859-5, ISO-IR-111, UNICODE 2.0.14.

Appendix contains coding/conversion tables for upper half of code table from KOI8-U to UNICODE, CP1251, ISO8859-5.

KOI8-U is compatible with KOI8-R in all Cyrillic Letters and completes it with four Ukrainian (#164, #180 - ukr. ie, #166, #182 - ukr. i, #167, #183 - ukr. yi, #173, #189 - ukr. ghe with upturn) and one Byelorussian (#174, #190 - byelorussian short u) letters are complaint with ISO-IR-111.

All FORMS except positions ocupied by Ukrainian and Byelorussian letters and Bullets in positions #148, #149, #158 coincide with KOI8-R.

Positions #147, #150-153, #155-#157, #159 are used for important characters which are currently missing from ISO-IR-111.

Code of Belorussian letter SHORT U is complaint with ISO-IR-111.

The description of all characters from the upper half of the table in compliance with ISO 10646 (Unicode) with correction of Ukrainian letter KGE with upturn (UNICODE #0490, 0491). All Russian letters places have left at their original KOI8-R places. Introduced new ukrainian letters ocupy positions where they are used as standard-de-facto in Ukrainian language applications and newsgroups exchange accepted all Ukrainian language community.

<hex-code> <description>

Legend

* New letters introduced

+ Change in name for Ukrainian letter

Security Considerations

Security issues are not discussed in this memo.

APPENDIX A

DIFFERENCE OF KOI8-U/Internet from EXISTING KOI8-R and ISO-IR-111

KOI8-U is compatible with KOI8-R in all Cyrillic Letters and completes it with four Ukrainian letters and one Byelorussian which positions coincide with ISO-IR-111.

FORMS in positions #128-#146, Bullets in positions #148, #149, #158 and Mathemathical symbols in positions #151, #159 coincide with KOI8-R.

Positions #147, #150, #152, #153, #155-#157, #159 are used for important characters which are currently missing from ISO-IR-111

KOI8-U compatible with ISO-IR-111 in positions of all Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian letters but completed with one additional Ukrainian letter KGE WITH UPTURN. Other Cyrillic letters excluded from codetable and replaced with FORM elements from KOI8-R. Positions #128-#159 are used for FORMS elements from KOI8-R and other important characters Which are currently missing from ISO-IR-111.