KOI8-R

KOI8-R (RFC 1489) is an 8-bit <a href="/facts/Character_encoding/ShJHIMoA">character encoding</a> derived from the <a href="/facts/KOI-8/EeAoW6UL">KOI-8</a> encoding by the programmer <a href="/facts/Andrei_Chernov/JRcTdj6v">Andrei Chernov</a> in 1993 and designed to cover <a href="/facts/Russian_language/ETXrTgHV">Russian</a>, which uses the <a href="/facts/Russian_alphabet/ezoUpIPL">Russian subset</a> of a <a href="/facts/Cyrillic_script/0btN3oWC">Cyrillic script</a>. KOI-8, on its turn, is an 8-bit extension of the <a href="/facts/KOI-7/KKdDvngu">KOI-7</a> encoding, which inherited a <a href="/facts/Phonemic_orthography/wqndpTbB">phonetic</a> correspondence of Russian and Latin letters from the <a href="/facts/MTK-2/AuCf6WGf">MTK-2</a> <a href="/facts/Teletype/pn5SQKTf">teletype</a> code. As a result, Russian Cyrillic letters in KOI8-R are in pseudo-Latin alphabetical order rather than the normal Cyrillic one like in <a href="/facts/ISO_8859-5/RCKfCDGm">ISO 8859-5</a>. Although this may seem unnatural, this has the useful effect that if the 8th bit is stripped, the text remains partially readable in any <a href="/facts/ASCII/vGUI33Qu">ASCII</a>-based encoding (including KOI8-R itself) as a case-reversed <a href="/facts/Transliteration/1eemsW6o">transliteration</a>. For example, "Код для обмена и обработки информации" (the Russian meaning of the "KOI" acronym) becomes kOD DLQ OBMENA I OBRABOTKI INFORMACII.
KOI-8 stands for 8-bitnyy kod dlya obmena i obrabotki informatsii (<a href="/facts/Russian_language/ETXrTgHV">Russian</a>: 8-битный код для обмена и обработки информации) which means "8-Bit Code for Information Interchange". In <a href="/facts/Microsoft_Windows/bwhAhuSL">Microsoft Windows</a>, KOI8-R is assigned the code page number 20866. In <a href="/facts/IBM/QszA7nwd">IBM</a>, KOI8-R is assigned code page 878. KOI8-R also happens to cover <a href="/facts/Bulgarian_language/susG15pr">Bulgarian</a>.
It lacks proper quotation marks for these languages: both «...» and the Bulgarian „...“. <a href="/facts/Windows-1251/mb3epF8S">Windows-1251</a> does support these, as well as more letters, and has thus become more popular. KOI8-R is used by less than 0.004% of websites, mostly Russian and Bulgarian. <a href="/facts/Unicode/DDu3MfPV">Unicode</a> and <a href="/facts/UTF-8/xlaVHSyf">UTF-8</a> is preferred to single-byte Cyrillic encodings in modern applications, Unicode contains 436 <a href="/facts/Cyrillic_script_in_Unicode/sxQGIqSb">Cyrillic letters</a> including for <a href="/facts/Old_Cyrillic/vuAUHp90">Old Cyrillic</a>.

KOI8-R open-in-new

KOI8-R