| Language(s) | Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, Bulgarian |
|---|---|
| Classification | 8-bit KOI, extended ASCII |
| Extends | KOI8-B |
| Based on | KOI8-U, KOI8-R |
| Other related encoding(s) | KOI8-E, KOI8-F |
KOI8-RU is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian which use a Cyrillic alphabet. It is closely related to KOI8-R, which covers Russian and Bulgarian, but replaces ten box drawing characters with five Ukrainian and Belarusian letters Ґ, Є, І, Ї, and Ў in both upper case and lower case. It is even more closely related to KOI8-U, which does not include Ў but otherwise makes the same letter replacements. The additional letter allocations are matched by KOI8-E, except for Ґ which is added to KOI8-F.
In IBM, KOI8-RU is assigned code page/CCSID 1167.[1][2]
KOI8 remains much more commonly used than ISO 8859-5, which never really caught on. Another common Cyrillic character encoding is Windows-1251. In the future, both may eventually give way to Unicode.
KOI8 stands for Kod obmena informatsiey, 8 bit (Russian: Код обмена информацией, 8 бит) which means "Code for Information Exchange, 8 bit".
The KOI8 character sets have the property that the Russian Cyrillic letters are in pseudo-Roman order rather than the natural Cyrillic alphabetical order as in ISO 8859-5. Although this may seem unnatural, it has the useful property that if the eighth bit is stripped, the text can still be read (or at least deciphered) in case-reversed transliteration on an ordinary ASCII terminal. For instance, "Русский Текст" in KOI8-RU becomes rUSSKIJ tEKST ("Russian Text") if the 8th bit is stripped.
- ^ "Code page 1167 information document". Archived from the original on 2017-01-16.
- ^ "CCSID 1167 information document". Archived from the original on 2016-03-27.