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CurrentINTERNET STANDARDIETF streamSTD63

RFC 3629: UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646

In plain English — editorial summary, not part of the RFC

ISO/IEC 10646-1 defines a large character set called the Universal Character Set (UCS) which encompasses most of the world's writing systems. The originally proposed encodings of the UCS, however, were not compatible with many current applications and protocols, and this has led to the development of UTF-8, the object of this memo. UTF-8 has the characteristic of preserving the full US-ASCII range, providing compatibility with file systems, parsers and other software that rely on US-ASCII values but are transparent to other values. This memo obsoletes and replaces RFC 2279.

Document record

Document ID
RFC3629
Published
November 2003
Authors
F. Yergeau
Status
INTERNET STANDARD
Stream
IETF
Area
—
Pages
14
Also known as
STD63
Obsoletes:
RFC 2279

Topics

Standards lineage

This document is one revision in a chain of 3 RFCs, each formally replacing the one before it.

  1. RFC 2044 (1996)
  2. RFC 2279 (1998)
  3. RFC 3629 (2003)

Read the full history of UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646 →

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The document record above — title, authors, date, status, stream, area, relationships, DOI and errata — is imported verbatim from the public RFC Editor index. The “in plain English” section is editorial: written by The metasystema editorial team, not part of the RFC. Where the two differ, the RFC text governs.

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canonical URL: /rfc/3629-utf-8-a-transformation-format-of-iso-10646