RFC 1922 (rfc1922) - Page 1 of 27
Chinese Character Encoding for Internet Messages
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group HF. Zhu
Request for Comments: 1922 Tsinghua U
Category: Informational DY. Hu
Tsinghua U
ZG. Wang
CITS
TC. Kao
III
WCH. Chang
III
M. Crispin
U Washington
March 1996
Chinese Character Encoding for Internet Messages
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard. Distribution of this memo is
unlimited.
Abstract
This memo describes methods of transporting Chinese characters in
Internet services which transport text, such as electronic mail
[RFC-822], network news [RFC-1036], telnet [RFC-854] and the World
Wide Web [RFC-1866].
Introduction
As the use of Internet covers more and more Chinese people in the
world, the need has increased for the ability to send documents
containing Chinese characters on the Internet. The methods described
in this document provide means of transporting existing Chinese
character sets as well as leaving space for future extension.
This document describes two encodings, ISO-2022-CN and
ISO-2022-CN-EXT. These are designed with interoperability in mind
and are encouraged in this document for current Chinese interchange;
they are 7-bit, support both simplified and traditional characters
using both GB and CNS/Big5, and do not impose any unusual quoting
requirements on ASCII characters.
As important related issues, this document gives detailed
descriptions of the two encodings CN-GB and CN-Big5, and a brief
description of ISO/IEC 10646 [ISO-10646]. CN-GB and CN-Big5 are
Zhu, et al Informational