Re: Disturbing IE 4.0pp2 behavior for lang="en"
=?iso-8859-1?Q?Martin_J=2E_D=FCrst?= (mduerst@ifi.unizh.ch)
Fri, 22 Aug 1997 17:20:53 +0200 (MET DST)
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 17:20:53 +0200 (MET DST)
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Martin_J=2E_D=FCrst?= <mduerst@ifi.unizh.ch>
To: Mary Holstege <holstege@firstfloor.COM>
cc: Benjamin Franz <snowhare@netimages.com>, www-html@w3.org
In-Reply-To: <199708221507.IAA20011@homeplate.firstfloor.COM>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.96.970822171805.703o-100000@enoshima>
Subject: Re: Disturbing IE 4.0pp2 behavior for lang="en"
On Fri, 22 Aug 1997, Mary Holstege wrote:
>
> Benjamin Franz writes:
> > On Fri, 22 Aug 1997, E. Stephen Mack wrote:
> > > <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" value="text/html; charset='UTF-8'">
> > ^^^^^^^
> > This is the second time I have seen someone assert (either explicitly or
> > implicitly) that the charset should be contained in quotes. I looked
> > through the HTTP1.1 spec and could not find anything suggesting that this
> > was either necessary or even acceptable, and it appears to conflict with
> > actual usage for most documents I have seen. Where is this coming from?
> Pages 24 and 25 of the spec:
>
> HTTP uses Internet Media Types in the Content-Type (section 14.18)
> and Accept (section 14.1) header fields in order to provide open and
> extensible data typing and type negotiation.
>
> media-type = type "/" subtype *( ";" parameter )
> type = token
> subtype = token
>
> Parameters may follow the type/subtype in the form of attribute/value
> pairs.
>
> parameter = attribute "=" value
> attribute = token
> value = token | quoted-string
>
> Looks to me like you should be able to quote it or not, as you please, because
> in this case the parameter value (UTF-8) is a valid token.
>
> However, quoted string is defined to use the double quote (top of page 16).
> SGML and HTML allow you to use either paired double or single quotes.
Yes indeed. But in that case, it should be
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" value='text/html; charset="UTF-8"'>
It may also be that either HTTP or MIME has some restrictions on
what goes for a "charset" parameter (e.g just a token and not a
quoted-string). But probably the main problems is whether browsers
grok the above string.
Regards, Martin.