RFC - 3629

UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646

Original:	ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc3629.txt
Authors:	F. Yergeau [Alis Technologies]
Date:	November 2003
Category:	Standard: STD-63 ]

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Obsoletes:
RFC-2279	UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646 (Obsoleted by RFC-3629std63)

Referred by:	75 RFC
Refers to:	5 RFC

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Status

This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

ISO/IEC 10646-1 defines a large character set called the Universal Character Set (UCS) which encompasses most of the world's writing systems. The originally proposed encodings of the UCS, however, were not compatible with many current applications and protocols, and this has led to the development of UTF-8, the object of this memo. UTF-8 has the characteristic of preserving the full US-ASCII range, providing compatibility with file systems, parsers and other software that rely on US-ASCII values but are transparent to other values. This memo obsoletes and replaces RFC 2279(-> 3629^std63).

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