-=> Quoting Herbert Rosenau to Goran Eriksson <=-

 GE>> What multi-byte character sets are currently used in ftn
 GE>> messages?
 
 HR>> Absolutly none.
 
 GE> I was under the impression that Big-5 used to be used in ftn
 GE> messages.

 HR> No. Not translateable.

 HR> There are only 

 HR> "IBMPC", 
 HR> "ASCII"
 HR> "LATIN-1"
 HR> "MAC"

 HR> defined in FTSC. All of them are single byte.

I think you are slightly confused. He didn't ask which multi-byte
character sets are mentioned in FTSC docs, or "supported". He asked
which sets people *use*. 

And they *do* use other sets than those you've mentioned. 

 HR> Tobias Ernst (2:2476/418) is currently working on an extension but
 HR> it's far from useable. I don't know if his extension will include
 HR> UNICODE or not. 

Frankly, I think we should just go to Unicode. It has provisions for
specifying subsets and switching them, so you can ID the subset at the
start of block, and just use 8-bit chars in the block, and still
"escape" to use 16-bit chars inside that block for small quotes or
special symbols. And you can even switch subsets. Or so I'm told.

--- FMailX 1.48a