Hi, Mark Lewis!
I read your message from 13.07.2017 09:18

  ak>> But do many people have FTN fido software which doesn't support
  ak>> UTF8? Golded, for instance.

  ml> GoldEd(+) can but the real problem is generally in the display
  ml> terminals used... especially when, for example, all CP437
  ml> characters are not properly cross-mapped to their UTF-8 equivalents
  ml> before being sent to the video sub-system for display... the
  ml> question is what should be doing the cross-mapping... then there's
  ml> the question of the fonts where some only have 256 glyphs and
  ml> others may have 512 glyphs which leaves still a huge shortage of
  ml> glyphs that may need to be displayed...

IMHO, such a cross mapping cannot solve UTF8 translation on one byte 
systems fully. And therefore there is no sense to do it at all. What are 
you supposing to see after cross mapping Russian text into CP437?

Bye, Mark!
Alexander Koryagin
fido7.fidonews 2017
--- FIDOGATE 5.1.7ds