LYNX-DEV Character set support 5

[Michael Sokolov]

   Hi,
   
   After settling the Makefile issue (at least for now), I'm getting back
to the character set support issue. In 0.27 (or maybe earlier) devel code
the raw mode has been finally implemented correctly. Thanks!
   I fully understand Klaus Weide's point that raw mode isn't the way to
go, and getting it to work correctly is (and always was for me) a
preliminary step for the real improvement: supporting the chacarter set I
have had problems with.
   Using the 0.27 devel code, I have written a table for that character
set. Before contributing it, however, I want to clarify some points. This
character set is the Alternative Cyrillic character set specified by GOST.
GOST is the national standard system first in the USSR and then in Russia,
similar to ANSI in the USA. Thus the correct name for this character set is
GOST Alternative Cyrillic Character Set (Alternative should probably be
shortened to Alt, or the name will be too long), but it's often called "DOS
Cyrillic encoding" in vernacular. GOST specifies two character sets, Main
and Alternative. Main was written without any regard for pre-existing
character sets, and therefore it's not very popular. Alternative, on the
other hand, is really the IBM PC character set with some Western European
and Greek characters replaced by Cyrillic letters. It's very popular (in
fact, almost universal) on IBM PC and compatibles running DOS (hence the
vernacular name).
   What I'm not sure about is the MIME name. One HTTP server that uses this
character set returns "ibm866" in the response, but I doubt whether it's
the official name. Not only it looks strange ("ibm866" rather than
"cp866"), but also that same server uses other character sets and returns
names that I know to be wrong. Does anyone know where can I find a complete
list of all MIME character set names registered with IANA? I want to find
out the correct MIME name for this character set before I contribute the
table to avoid the confusion and counterproductivity caused by a wrong name
included in Lynx.
   BTW, speaking of servers returning wrong character set names, is there
any way to tell Lynx that a certain unknown charset name is an alias for a
known one?
   
   Sincerely,
   Michael Sokolov
   Phone: 216-646-1864
   ARPA Internet SMTP mail: address@hidden
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