---
created_at: '2014-11-23T12:06:50.000Z'
title: UTF-8 history (2003)
url: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/utf-8-history.txt
author: olalonde
points: 55
story_text: ''
comment_text: 
num_comments: 7
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1416744410
_tags:
- story
- author_olalonde
- story_8648541
objectID: '8648541'

---
[Source](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/utf-8-history.txt "Permalink to ")

Subject: UTF-8 history From: "Rob 'Commander' Pike"  Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 22:32:32 -0700 (Thu 06:32 BST) To: mkuhn (at) acm.org, henry (at) spsystems.net Cc: ken (at) entrisphere.com Looking around at some UTF-8 background, I see the same incorrect story being repeated over and over. The incorrect version is: 1\. IBM designed UTF-8. 2\. Plan 9 implemented it. That's not true. UTF-8 was designed, in front of my eyes, on a placemat in a New Jersey diner one night in September or so 1992. What happened was this. We had used the original UTF from ISO 10646 to make Plan 9 support 16-bit characters, but we hated it. We were close to shipping the system when, late one afternoon, I received a call from some folks, I think at IBM - I remember them being in Austin \- who were in an X/Open committee meeting. They wanted Ken and me to vet their FSS/UTF design. We understood why they were introducing a new design, and Ken and I suddenly realized there was an opportunity to use our experience to design a really good standard and get the X/Open guys to push it out. We suggested this and the deal was, if we could do it fast, OK. So we went to dinner, Ken figured out the bit-packing, and when we came back to the lab after dinner we called the X/Open guys and explained our scheme. We mailed them an outline of our spec, and they replied saying that it was better than theirs (I don't believe I ever actually saw their proposal; I know I don't remember it) and how fast could we implement it? I think this was a Wednesday night and we promised a complete running system by Monday, which I think was when their big vote was. So that night Ken wrote packing and unpacking code and I started tearing into the C and graphics libraries. The next day all the code was done and we started converting the text files on the system itself. By Friday some time Plan 9 was running, and only running, what would be called UTF-8. We called X/Open and the rest, as they say, is slightly rewritten history. Why didn't we just use their FSS/UTF? As I remember, it was because in that first phone call I sang out a list of desiderata for any such encoding, and FSS/UTF was lacking at least one - the ability to synchronize a byte stream picked up mid-run, with less that one character being consumed before synchronization. Becuase that was lacking, we felt free - and were given freedom - to roll our own. I think the "IBM designed it, Plan 9 implemented it" story originates in RFC2279. At the time, we were so happy UTF-8 was catching on we didn't say anything about the bungled history. Neither of us is at the Labs any more, but I bet there's an e-mail thread in the archive there that would support our story and I might be able to get someone to dig it out. So, full kudos to the X/Open and IBM folks for making the opportunity happen and for pushing it forward, but Ken designed it with me cheering him on, whatever the history books say. -rob Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2003 18:44:05 -0700 From: "Rob `Commander' Pike"  To: Markus Kuhn  cc: henry (at) spsystems.net, ken (at) entrisphere.com, Greger Leijonhufvud  Subject: Re: UTF-8 history I asked Russ Cox to dig through the archives. I have attached his message. I think you'll agree it supports the story I sent earlier. The mail we sent to X/Open (I believe Ken did the editing and mailing of that document) includes a new desideratum #6 about discovering character boundaries. We'll never know how much the original X/Open proposal influenced us; the two proposals are very different but do share some characteristics. I don't remember looking at it in detail, but it was a long time ago. I very clearly remember Ken writing on the placemat and wished we had kept it! -rob From: Russ Cox  To: r (at) google.com Subject: utf digging Date-Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2003 7:46 PM -0400 bootes's /sys/src/libc/port/rune.c changed from the division-heavy old utf on sep 4 1992. the version that made it into the dump is dated 19:51:55. it was commented the next day but otherwise remained unchanged until nov 14 1996, when runelen was sped up by inspecting the rune explicitly rather than using runetochar's return value. may 26 2001 was the next and last change, to add runenlen. here are some mails from your mail boxes that turn up by grepping for utf. the first refers to utf.c, which is a copy of a wctomb and mbtowc that handle the full 6-byte utf-8 encoding of 32-bit runes. it's quite ugly, with all the logic in control flow. i assume it became the code in the proposal as a result of that first mail. in /usr/ken/utf/xutf i found a copy of what appears to be the original not-self-synchronizing encoding proposal, with the utf-8 scheme tacked onto the end (starting at "We define 7 byte types"). that's also below. the version below is the first, dated sep 2 23:44:10. it went through a number of edits to become the second mail below by the morning of Sep 8. the mail log shows that second mail going out as well as taking a while to come back to ken. helix: Sep 8 03:22:13: ken: upas/sendmail: remote inet!xopen.co.uk!xojig >From ken Tue Sep 8 03:22:07 EDT 1992 (xojig@xopen.co.uk) 6833 helix: Sep 8 03:22:13: ken: upas/sendmail: delivered rob From ken Tue Sep 8 03:22:07 EDT 1992 6833 helix: Sep 8 03:22:16: ken: upas/sendmail: remote pyxis!andrew From ken Tue Sep 8 03:22:07 EDT 1992 (andrew) 6833 helix: Sep 8 03:22:19: ken: upas/sendmail: remote coma!dmr From ken Tue Sep 8 03:22:07 EDT 1992 (dmr) 6833 helix: Sep 8 03:25:52: ken: upas/sendmail: delivered rob From ken Tue Sep 8 03:24:58 EDT 1992 141 helix: Sep 8 03:36:13: ken: upas/sendmail: delivered ken From ken Tue Sep 8 03:36:12 EDT 1992 6833 enjoy. >From ken Fri Sep 4 03:37:39 EDT 1992 you might want to look at /usr/ken/utf/utf.c and see if you can make it prettier. >From ken Tue Sep 8 03:22:07 EDT 1992 Here is our modified FSS-UTF proposal. The words are the same as on the previous proposal. My apologies to the author. The code has been tested to some degree and should be pretty good shape. We have converted Plan 9 to use this encoding and are about to issue a distribution to an initial set of university users. File System Safe Universal Character Set Transformation Format (FSS-UTF) \-------------------------------------------------------------------------- With the approval of ISO/IEC 10646 (Unicode) as an international standard and the anticipated wide spread use of this universal coded character set (UCS), it is necessary for historically ASCII based operating systems to devise ways to cope with representation and handling of the large number of characters that are possible to be encoded by this new standard. There are several challenges presented by UCS which must be dealt with by historical operating systems and the C-language programming environment. The most significant of these challenges is the encoding scheme used by UCS. More precisely, the challenge is the marrying of the UCS standard with existing programming languages and existing operating systems and utilities. The challenges of the programming languages and the UCS standard are being dealt with by other activities in the industry. However, we are still faced with the handling of UCS by historical operating systems and utilities. Prominent among the operating system UCS handling concerns is the representation of the data within the file system. An underlying assumption is that there is an absolute requirement to maintain the existing operating system software investment while at the same time taking advantage of the use the large number of characters provided by the UCS. UCS provides the capability to encode multi-lingual text within a single coded character set. However, UCS and its UTF variant do not protect null bytes and/or the ASCII slash ("/") making these character encodings incompatible with existing Unix implementations. The following proposal provides a Unix compatible transformation format of UCS such that Unix systems can support multi-lingual text in a single encoding. This transformation format encoding is intended to be used as a file code. This transformation format encoding of UCS is intended as an intermediate step towards full UCS support. However, since nearly all Unix implementations face the same obstacles in supporting UCS, this proposal is intended to provide a common and compatible encoding during this transition stage. Goal/Objective \-------------- With the assumption that most, if not all, of the issues surrounding the handling and storing of UCS in historical operating system file systems are understood, the objective is to define a UCS transformation format which also meets the requirement of being usable on a historical operating system file system in a non-disruptive manner. The intent is that UCS will be the process code for the transformation format, which is usable as a file code. Criteria for the Transformation Format \-------------------------------------- Below are the guidelines that were used in defining the UCS transformation format: 1) Compatibility with historical file systems: Historical file systems disallow the null byte and the ASCII slash character as a part of the file name. 2) Compatibility with existing programs: The existing model for multibyte processing is that ASCII does not occur anywhere in a multibyte encoding. There should be no ASCII code values for any part of a transformation format representation of a character that was not in the ASCII character set in the UCS representation of the character. 3) Ease of conversion from/to UCS. 4) The first byte should indicate the number of bytes to follow in a multibyte sequence. 5) The transformation format should not be extravagant in terms of number of bytes used for encoding. 6) It should be possible to find the start of a character efficiently starting from an arbitrary location in a byte stream. Proposed FSS-UTF \---------------- The proposed UCS transformation format encodes UCS values in the range [0,0x7fffffff] using multibyte characters of lengths 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 bytes. For all encodings of more than one byte, the initial byte determines the number of bytes used and the high-order bit in each byte is set. Every byte that does not start 10xxxxxx is the start of a UCS character sequence. An easy way to remember this transformation format is to note that the number of high-order 1's in the first byte signifies the number of bytes in the multibyte character: Bits Hex Min Hex Max Byte Sequence in Binary 1 7 00000000 0000007f 0vvvvvvv 2 11 00000080 000007FF 110vvvvv 10vvvvvv 3 16 00000800 0000FFFF 1110vvvv 10vvvvvv 10vvvvvv 4 21 00010000 001FFFFF 11110vvv 10vvvvvv 10vvvvvv 10vvvvvv 5 26 00200000 03FFFFFF 111110vv 10vvvvvv 10vvvvvv 10vvvvvv 10vvvvvv 6 31 04000000 7FFFFFFF 1111110v 10vvvvvv 10vvvvvv 10vvvvvv 10vvvvvv 10vvvvvv The UCS value is just the concatenation of the v bits in the multibyte encoding. When there are multiple ways to encode a value, for example UCS 0, only the shortest encoding is legal. Below are sample implementations of the C standard wctomb() and mbtowc() functions which demonstrate the algorithms for converting from UCS to the transformation format and converting from the transformation format to UCS. The sample implementations include error checks, some of which may not be necessary for conformance: typedef struct { int cmask; int cval; int shift; long lmask; long lval; } Tab; static Tab tab[] = { 0x80, 0x00, 0*6, 0x7F, 0, /* 1 byte sequence */ 0xE0, 0xC0, 1*6, 0x7FF, 0x80, /* 2 byte sequence */ 0xF0, 0xE0, 2*6, 0xFFFF, 0x800, /* 3 byte sequence */ 0xF8, 0xF0, 3*6, 0x1FFFFF, 0x10000, /* 4 byte sequence */ 0xFC, 0xF8, 4*6, 0x3FFFFFF, 0x200000, /* 5 byte sequence */ 0xFE, 0xFC, 5*6, 0x7FFFFFFF, 0x4000000, /* 6 byte sequence */ 0, /* end of table */ }; int mbtowc(wchar_t *p, char *s, size_t n) { long l; int c0, c, nc; Tab *t; if(s == 0) return 0; nc = 0; if(n <= nc) return -1; c0 = *s & 0xff; l = c0; for(t=tab; t->cmask; t++) { nc++; if((c0 & t->cmask) == t->cval) { l &= t->lmask; if(l < t->lval) return -1; *p = l; return nc; } if(n <= nc) return -1; s++; c = (*s ^ 0x80) & 0xFF; if(c & 0xC0) return -1; l = (l<<6) | c; } return -1; } int wctomb(char *s, wchar_t wc) { long l; int c, nc; Tab *t; if(s == 0) return 0; l = wc; nc = 0; for(t=tab; t->cmask; t++) { nc++; if(l <= t->lmask) { c = t->shift; *s = t->cval | (l>>c); while(c > 0) { c -= 6; s++; *s = 0x80 | ((l>>c) & 0x3F); } return nc; } } return -1; } >From ken Tue Sep 8 03:24:58 EDT 1992 i mailed it out, but it went into a black hole. i didnt get my copy. it must be hung up on the internat address with coma down or something. >From ken Tue Sep 8 03:42:43 EDT 1992 i finally got my copy. \--- /usr/ken/utf/xutf from dump of Sep 2 1992 --- File System Safe Universal Character Set Transformation Format (FSS-UTF) \-------------------------------------------------------------------------- With the approval of ISO/IEC 10646 (Unicode) as an international standard and the anticipated wide spread use of this universal coded character set (UCS), it is necessary for historically ASCII based operating systems to devise ways to cope with representation and handling of the large number of characters that are possible to be encoded by this new standard. There are several challenges presented by UCS which must be dealt with by historical operating systems and the C-language programming environment. The most significant of these challenges is the encoding scheme used by UCS. More precisely, the challenge is the marrying of the UCS standard with existing programming languages and existing operating systems and utilities. The challenges of the programming languages and the UCS standard are being dealt with by other activities in the industry. However, we are still faced with the handling of UCS by historical operating systems and utilities. Prominent among the operating system UCS handling concerns is the representation of the data within the file system. An underlying assumption is that there is an absolute requirement to maintain the existing operating system software investment while at the same time taking advantage of the use the large number of characters provided by the UCS. UCS provides the capability to encode multi-lingual text within a single coded character set. However, UCS and its UTF variant do not protect null bytes and/or the ASCII slash ("/") making these character encodings incompatible with existing Unix implementations. The following proposal provides a Unix compatible transformation format of UCS such that Unix systems can support multi-lingual text in a single encoding. This transformation format encoding is intended to be used as a file code. This transformation format encoding of UCS is intended as an intermediate step towards full UCS support. However, since nearly all Unix implementations face the same obstacles in supporting UCS, this proposal is intended to provide a common and compatible encoding during this transition stage. Goal/Objective \-------------- With the assumption that most, if not all, of the issues surrounding the handling and storing of UCS in historical operating system file systems are understood, the objective is to define a UCS transformation format which also meets the requirement of being usable on a historical operating system file system in a non-disruptive manner. The intent is that UCS will be the process code for the transformation format, which is usable as a file code. Criteria for the Transformation Format \-------------------------------------- Below are the guidelines that were used in defining the UCS transformation format: 1) Compatibility with historical file systems: Historical file systems disallow the null byte and the ASCII slash character as a part of the file name. 2) Compatibility with existing programs: The existing model for multibyte processing is that ASCII does not occur anywhere in a multibyte encoding. There should be no ASCII code values for any part of a transformation format representation of a character that was not in the ASCII character set in the UCS representation of the character. 3) Ease of conversion from/to UCS. 4) The first byte should indicate the number of bytes to follow in a multibyte sequence. 5) The transformation format should not be extravagant in terms of number of bytes used for encoding. Proposed FSS-UTF \---------------- The proposed UCS transformation format encodes UCS values in the range [0,0x7fffffff] using multibyte characters of lengths 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 bytes. For all encodings of more than one byte, the initial byte determines the number of bytes used and the high-order bit in each byte is set. An easy way to remember this transformation format is to note that the number of high-order 1's in the first byte is the same as the number of subsequent bytes in the multibyte character: Bits Hex Min Hex Max Byte Sequence in Binary 1 7 00000000 0000007f 0zzzzzzz 2 13 00000080 0000207f 10zzzzzz 1yyyyyyy 3 19 00002080 0008207f 110zzzzz 1yyyyyyy 1xxxxxxx 4 25 00082080 0208207f 1110zzzz 1yyyyyyy 1xxxxxxx 1wwwwwww 5 31 02082080 7fffffff 11110zzz 1yyyyyyy 1xxxxxxx 1wwwwwww 1vvvvvvv The bits included in the byte sequence is biased by the minimum value so that if all the z's, y's, x's, w's, and v's are zero, the minimum value is represented. In the byte sequences, the lowest-order encoded bits are in the last byte; the high-order bits (the z's) are in the first byte. This transformation format uses the byte values in the entire range of 0x80 to 0xff, inclusive, as part of multibyte sequences. Given the assumption that at most there are seven (7) useful bits per byte, this transformation format is close to minimal in its number of bytes used. Below are sample implementations of the C standard wctomb() and mbtowc() functions which demonstrate the algorithms for converting from UCS to the transformation format and converting from the transformation format to UCS. The sample implementations include error checks, some of which may not be necessary for conformance: #define OFF1 0x0000080 #define OFF2 0x0002080 #define OFF3 0x0082080 #define OFF4 0x2082080 int wctomb(char *s, wchar_t wc) { if (s == 0) return 0; /* no shift states */ #ifdef wchar_t_is_signed if (wc < 0) goto bad; #endif if (wc <= 0x7f) /* fits in 7 bits */ { s[0] = wc; return 1; } if (wc <= 0x1fff + OFF1) /* fits in 13 bits */ { wc -= OFF1; s[0] = 0x80 | (wc >> 7); s[1] = 0x80 | (wc & 0x7f); return 2; } if (wc <= 0x7ffff + OFF2) /* fits in 19 bits */ { wc -= OFF2; s[0] = 0xc0 | (wc >> 14); s[1] = 0x80 | ((wc >> 7) & 0x7f); s[2] = 0x80 | (wc & 0x7f); return 3; } if (wc <= 0x1ffffff + OFF3) /* fits in 25 bits */ { wc -= OFF3; s[0] = 0xe0 | (wc >> 21); s[1] = 0x80 | ((wc >> 14) & 0x7f); s[2] = 0x80 | ((wc >> 7) & 0x7f); s[3] = 0x80 | (wc & 0x7f); return 4; } #if !defined(wchar_t_is_signed) || defined(wchar_t_is_more_than_32_bits) if (wc > 0x7fffffff) goto bad; #endif wc -= OFF4; s[0] = 0xf0 | (wc >> 28); s[1] = 0x80 | ((wc >> 21) & 0x7f); s[2] = 0x80 | ((wc >> 14) & 0x7f); s[3] = 0x80 | ((wc >> 7) & 0x7f); s[4] = 0x80 | (wc & 0x7f); return 5; bad:; errno = EILSEQ; return -1; } int mbtowc(wchar_t *p, const char *s, size_t n) { unsigned char *uc; /* so that all bytes are nonnegative */ if ((uc = (unsigned char *)s) == 0) return 0; /* no shift states */ if (n == 0) return -1; if ((*p = uc[0]) < 0x80) return uc[0] != ' 

