why doesn't EVERYTHING default to UTF-8? [closed]

Question

I'm just curious that there are modern systems out there that default to something other than UTF-8. I've had a person block for an entire day on the multiple locations that a mysql system can have different encoding. Very frustrating.

Is there any good reason not to use utf-8 as a default (and storage space seems like not a good reason)? Not trying to be argumentitive, just curious.

thx

Answer 1

Once upon a time there was no unicode or UTF-8, and disparate encoding schemes were in use throughout the world.

It wasn't until back in 1988 that the initial unicode proposal was issued, with the goal of encoding all the worlds characters in a common encoding.

The first release in 1991 covered many character representations, however, it wasn't until 2006 that Balinese, Cuneiform, N'Ko, Phags-pa, and Phoenician were added.

Until then the Phoenicians, and the others, were unable to represent their language in UTF-8 pissing off many programmers who wondered why everything was not just defaulting to UTF-8.