Re: XHTML and charset's [was: Re: XHTML questions]

If a browser receives a file from A Web server, and if the
Web server sends a content-type header specifyinb hte character
set of the data resource, then this is the charset that 
should be used.  If the resource is of type text/html, then
the browser should _ignore_ any charset value specified
in a META element. If the resource is of type text/xml, 
then the browser should also _ignore_ the charset value
specified using the encoding="xxx" portion of the XML declaration
(if any).

If the Web server does not specify a charset in the 
content-type header field, or if the file is retrieved by
some mechanism (like ftp, or filesystem access) that does not 
provide content-type/charset information, then the browser should
try and learn the charset using the mechanism appropriate to
the type of data it is getting

  * encoding=".."             for XML data
  * <meta http-equiv="...." > for HTML

As for UTF-8, the drawback is that this is not supported by
Navigator 3 (I think), and with navigator 4 you must be careful
to put a META elemnent inside the document declaring the
charset -- if you don,t then Navigator 4 will assume the
wrong charset value.

Ian


On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Chris Croome wrote:

> On Thu 29-Jun-2000 at 04:30:14AM -0400, Christian Smith wrote:
> > > 
> > > Is there any drawback to using UTF-8 for some browsers/platforms?
> > 
> > Certainly. Some browsers may not support UTF-8 (but all modern ones do).
> 
> Anyone have any idea which ones and which platforms?
> 
> Chris
> 
> -- 
> Chris Croome <chris@webarchitects.co.uk>
> 
> http://www.webarchitects.co.uk/
> http://chris.croome.net/
> 

Received on Thursday, 29 June 2000 11:55:15 UTC