When did people start using UTF-8 in files encoding and HTTP Content-Type headers? Since all web servers, OSes, text editors and browsers support it today, when did it become "compatible" between these?
+3
A:
UTF-8 has always been backwards compatible with ASCII.
So basically, it's been OK to use UTF-8 since it's been OK to use ASCII (which is quite a long time).
Skilldrick
2010-09-22 13:44:30
Well, not necessarily. Even though it's compatible with ASCII, if the browser didn't know about it, it could easily have thrown a wobbly.
Jon Skeet
2010-09-22 13:46:39
Not quite. ASCII is a 7-bit encoding and there were quite a few systems that (ab)used the 8th bit for their own purpose which broke UTF-8. For a while there was even "UTF-7" which was invented to work around this problem, but thankfuly the world adopted UTF-8 so UTF-7 is now mostly resting in piece.
Nemanja Trifunovic
2010-09-22 13:47:49
@Jon Good point. Feel free to give a more thorough answer (or edit mine) if you fancy it :)
Skilldrick
2010-09-22 13:53:26
2008 is when it became "mainstream". Everybody cool's using UTF-32 now :)
Skilldrick
2010-09-22 15:44:03