Disch wrote: |
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Why UTF-8 isn't the default codepage in windows... I'll never know. |
Because it didn't exist when Microsoft designed their multilanguage support... and UTF-8 isn't a code page, it is an encoding system.
That's the dichotomy between software that works, now, on multilingual systems, and a nice, pure system for multilingual support.
MS's code pages were a good answer to the existing technology problems.
Unicode and UTF require existing technology to change to match them.
You'll also notice that MS has made very significant efforts to update their technology to use the at-the-time nascant Unicode -- all their systems now natively use UTF-16. But they also need to continue to support the code page system, in which not just they, but many, many companies around the world, have heavily invested for multilingual systems support.
You can't just throw out older technology at the drop of a consortium's pen. The pecuniary costs are prohibitive.