Re: GSM and Unicode

From: YTang0648@aol.com
Date: Tue Nov 04 2003 - 16:52:12 EST

  • Next message: John Delacour: "Re: GSM and Unicode"

    In a message dated 11/4/2003 1:43:18 PM Pacific Standard Time,
    verdy_p@wanadoo.fr writes:
    That's normal: the GSM standard is not intended to support Unicode.
    Unicode support is added by phone makers that create products
    which can interact with 2 encoding schemes, provided that the
    GSM phone service provider offers this interchange in its platforms.
    hum.... I am quite lost. the GSM standard always support BOTH the default
    alphabet (which is a 7 bits) and a 16 Unicode mode. The problem is the Unicode
    mode can only send 70 characters and the default alphabet mode can send 140
    characters

    For example Nokia has a built-in "auto mode" in its phones which can
    detect automatically whever the incoming SMS message is coded in Unicode
    with UTF-8 or with the GSM charset with the prefixed ITU encoding
    scheme. It works reliably, but Nokia has also offered a compatiblity
    protocol option in the GSM standard, that allows sending explicitly which
    charset is actually used.
    are you sure it is 'UTF-8" instead of 16 bits Unicode ? (UCS2 or UTF-16)?
    I have not be able to find any material about Nokia support UTF-8, however, I
    do find material that Noaki support 16 bits unicode
    http://www.forum.nokia.com/html_reader/print?max_page_nbr=3&fileID=1070

    Users can then (like in browsers) choose a default charset when the
    encoding is not explicitly sent in the SMS message, but generally,
    SMS operators prefer transmitting the Unicode specifier explicitly when
    this is needed, so that phones will be able to determine correctly the
    effective charset used. I have no details on how this works, but I think
    that UTF-8 is marked simply by sending a leading BOM in the SMS
    message.
    Leading BOM encoded as 3 bytes in UTF-8 ??? Are you sure they are sending
    UTF-8 instead of 16 bits Unicode?

    Look in your mobile phone, in the configuration menu for SMS messages.
    If it is not present, then the default setup is based on the default setting
    for the country of the phone network on which your phone is connected.

    ==================================
    Frank Yung-Fong Tang
    System Architect, Iñtërnâtiônàl Dèvélôpmeñt, AOL Intèrâçtívë Sërviçes
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