>> Any insight on why Windows do not use the ISO charset standard
>> and invent their own charset?
>
> Ha, you must be joking.
Actually, if I remember correctly, Microsoft chose Latin-1 as the
base character encoding for Windows in the mid-'80s, back when
Latin-1 was only an ANSI standard (ISO had not fully blessed 8859-x
yet). They have since added graphic characters in the 80-9F range,
but that hardly constitutes "inventing their own charset."
1252 is compatible with 8859-1 if you (1) avoid the additional
characters in the 80-9F zone of 1252, and (2) don't need the C1
control characters in 8859-1 (who does?).
MS gets plenty of criticism for inventing their own standards (and
giving new names to old ideas), but they don't deserve it here.
-Doug
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