matthies> My question is, what is really used in practice, and where can I find matthies> evidence that using something else would be a bad idea? iso-2022-jp definitely. Shift-JIS is specific for Windows and Mac while EUC is specific for UNIX/Linux. Shift-JIS and EUC are not recommended for email and news even though some mailers can handle them. Please refer to RFC822 and RFC1036 in detail. Wen