-# Each line contains the gedcom name, appended with (LOHI) or (HILO)
-# for 2 byte encodings, and the iconv name of the charset, separated
-# by whitespace
-UNICODE(LOHI) UTF16LE
-UNICODE(HILO) UTF16BE
-ASCII ASCII
-ANSI CP1252
+# Each line contains (separated by whitespace):
+# - the gedcom name
+# - a token identifying the width of characters and the ordering;
+# currently supported values: 1, 2_LOHI, 2_HILO
+# - the iconv name of the charset
+
+# First the encodings supported by the GEDCOM standard
+UNICODE 2_LOHI UNICODELITTLE
+UNICODE 2_HILO UNICODEBIG
+ASCII 1 ASCII
+ANSEL 1 ANSEL
+
+# Then some very frequently used non-standard encodings:
+# Note that CP1252 is a superset of ISO-8859-1, so that is covered too
+ANSI 1 CP1252