RE: japanese encoding nightmare

Daniel Barclay wrote: 

>> Remember that <META HTTP-EQUIV="..." ...> elements are not supposed
>> to be read by the browser when the browser retrieved the document
>> from a server. 
>> Such META elements are for the server to read and use to construct
>> real HTTP header fields (if the server chooses that mechanism).

I recently read (from what I remember to be an authoritative source) that in
practice servers rarely ever read them because of performance so the browser
has to. (The only thing I can remember reading authoritative recently was
Weaving the Web, but I don't think TBL covered that in there. I wish my
member were better..)  

This http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#adef-http-equiv says
(emphasis mine): "HTTP servers *MAY* use the property name specified by the
http-equiv attribute to create an [RFC822]-style header in the HTTP
response."  That would imply they might not, and if so the browser would
have to handle, no?

Anyway, just wanted to point this out (it is a shame the recommendation
didn't say "MUST" instead of "MAY")

-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/

Received on Monday, 13 November 2006 23:11:30 UTC