Cyrillic, mailto and URL-encoded symbols
This online calculator can generate mailto links with Cyrillic characters.
Note: the original version of this page was created more than 13 years ago (now it is 2023). Since then, the situation with non-English alphabets support in different software has improved significantly, so the content is now a sort of history.
This site is an online engine for writing calculators powered by javascript. However, we interpret the concept of a calculator very loosely, as a kind of entity where the input data goes in, and the output is a meaningful result for the author.
This calculator is about encoding Cyrillic characters for use in links. For example, you can write http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Москва, and when you click on the link, the browser will open the corresponding article for you. Note, however, that the browser actually accessed a link that resembles something like this
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B2%D0%B0, only spared you these tedious details.
These percentages and letters are the URL-encoded form of address representation. However, what is there to talk about, those who need to know already know. It was originally invented to safely transmit characters that have meaning in the context of the URL, so as not to confuse the browser, and the server too. For example, / (forward slash). If it is to be passed as a parameter and not as part of the address, it should be passed as %2F.
It would seem that it's fine, the browser does everything for us, what exactly is the problem? And the problem is in another type of links, namely mailto: They are not designed to open a page in the browser, but to open the default mail client. Let's say more, they can pass the parameters of the letter, such as "subject" and "body of the letter". That's where the problem begins. If you write mailto:username@someaddress.com?subject=Hi&body=What's up? then nothing good will come of it (if the encoding of the page, as I have now, is UTF-8). Because the mail client won't understand it as it probably uses Windows-1251 encoding (checked on Outlook and Outlook Express).
But if you write mailto:username@someaddress.com?subject=%CF%F0%E8%E2%E5%F2&body=%CA%E0%EA%20%E6%E8%E7%ED%FC%3F like this, it will be very good. By "you" we mean, of course, the author of the web pages.
Below is a calculator that gives the URL-encoded equivalent of the entered text.
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