How to setup Win3.* Netscape to use KOI8-R fonts

Netscape client must put acceptable charset (KOI8-R assumed) via Accept-Charset header field when interact with HTTPD, but not do it currently.

Frank Tang from the Netscape Team tell me about their plans of implementing Accept-Charset field into after-3.0 releases, but it seems they forget it, if you ask them too, it can be faster.

Tuning description

Netscape 3.0-3.01 tuning

Netscape v3.0-3.01 has almost working KOI8-R support. To activate it you need KOI8-R fonts (you can get some Win3.1 KOI8-R fonts).

You need to choose Cyrillic(KOI8-R) encoding into Options|General Preferences|Fonts|For the Encoding and KOI8-R encoded font for each of two fonts.

Do not set Cyrillic (KOI8-R) encoding in Options|Document Encoding as permanent default encoding scheme (don't press Set Default). It violates HTML and HTTP standards which says that default document encoding (without any special instructions) must be ISO 8859-1. Temporary setting of another encoding is possible as workaround for broken Russian WWW pages.

Bug List:

The correct character translation way for Windows will be decode from KOI8-R to CP1251 for all input and decode from CP1251 to KOI8-R for all output with optional UNICODE fonts usage. Netscape not follow this way and provides raw KOI8-R mode, so users forced to setup KOI8-R fonts and keyboard. But even in raw KOI8-R mode it have following bugs.

• According to Internationalization of the Hypertext Markup Language (RFC 2070) charset= from HTTP header must overwrite charset= from <META ...> tag. Netscape does just opposite thing, i.e. <META ...> overwrites HTTP header charset. Load this test page with different HTTP header and META charsets to see this bug in action (check View|Document Info for Charset value, there must be KOI8-R, not windows-1251).
  
  

• When Cyrillic(KOI8-R) is set as Document Encoding (or it is default encoding by Set Default), most of text-oriented Java applets works incorrectly, i.e. it looks like <PARAM> tags not passed to applet at all. NullPointerException becomes most frequent error. It heals by setting Document Encoding to Western(Latin1), but it is only workaround of real bug. BTW, MS Internet Explorer works right in this case.
  
  
• This version can't correctly display some special HTML characters such as:

  © Copyright character

  • <LI> mark character

  they taken from ISO8859-1 instead of KOI8-R.
  
  

• It uses wrong font (CP1251 instead of KOI8-R) for ALT=... image attributes
  
  
• It uses wrong font (CP1251 instead of KOI8-R) for document <TITLE>s.

Enter your name, E-mail address and send the bug report above to Netscape team, the more bug reports they receive - the higher chances there are that they fix it.

You can use original Netscape bug report page instead, just Copy this bug report and Paste it there.

Netscape pre-v3.0b3 tuning

There is semi-correct way now to tune new Netscape (starting from 2.0) using User Defined document encoding, but Netscape use wrong mail/news Subject font for this encoding, bug the Netscape Team for it. BTW, it is impossible to specify MIME charset name used by User Defined encoding, so if you are a programmer and understand this issue, please bug the Netscape Team too to add MIME charset name to User Defined properties.

Following procedure assumes that you already install KOI8-R fonts by regular Windows way.

• For Netscape v2.01/v2.02 (still hacking Latin2 encoding due to wrong Subject font in User Defined encoding):
  
  
  1. In Options|General Preferences|Fonts|For the Encoding box set Latin1 encoding. Choose proportional and fixed KOI8-R fonts using corresponding Choose Font button. If you not do this step, you will unable to see standard KOI8-R pages with <META> tag charset or HTTP header charset, see my How to create Russian HTML documents in KOI8-R section for details.
     
     
  2. In For the Encoding box set Latin2 encoding. Choose proportional and fixed KOI8-R fonts using corresponding Choose Font button. If you not do this step, you will unable to see non-standard KOI8-R pages without <META> tag charset and HTTP header charset.
     
     
  3. In Options|Document Encoding choose Western (Latin2) encoding and save options after this step.

     WARNING: Due to hacking nature of this method you have wrong MIME charset in Mail/News messages: ISO-8859-2 instead of KOI8-R, it can confuse MIME-capable Mail/News readers.

  WARNING: In v2.02 you can't read/write Russian Subject: in News/Mail composition window, it is known bug.

  ---

• For Netscape v1.*:
  
  
  1. Go to Options|Preferences|Fonts menu. Add proportional KOI8-R font using corresponding Choose Font button.
     
     
  2. Then try to add fixed KOI8-R font in the same way. If this step fails (Netscape refuses to add some of KOI8-R fixed fonts), you need to modify fixed font name directly into Netscape initialization file: go to Netscape installation directory, find the file netscape.ini and load it into text editor of your choice, f.e. Notepad. Find section called

     [INTL]

     (case doesn't matter). This section may not exist initially, so you need to switch any font name in Fonts dialog to bring it here. In this section you will see both proportional and fixed font names in

     Font0=

     line. Change the name of second font (usually Courier New) to fixed KOI8-R font name. Next number after font name is font size, you can modify it here if you want, because it isn't accessible from usual Fonts menu too.
     
     
  3. Disable MIME in Options|Mail and News Preferences|Composition, since you can't tell Netscape that russian charset named KOI8-R, it produce wrong MIME headers.

How to make your fixed KOI8-R font visible from Fonts menu (for programmers only)

You need to fix font header via any .TTF font editor (f.e. Font Monster): change Proportion from Any to Monospaced (fixed-pitch flag CF_FIXEDPITCHONLY from the CHOOSEFONT structure) and change Family Type from Decorative to Text/Display, if neccessary.

See also Win95 Netscape tuning, X11 Netscape tuning.

Additional links: Cyrillic for MS Windows Netscape (good for beginners), Netscape Internationalization Secrets.