Re: Accept-Charset support

Klaus Weide wrote:
> On Sat, 7 Dec 1996, Jonathan Rosenne wrote:

> > The best solution to the problem raised is via "accept-language". It can be
> > reasonably assumed that if my preferred languages include French I can
> > display the French characters. 

No, it can't. You probably don't have Latin 2 fonts installed. If I happen
to visit you and you let me use your browser, I'll set accept-language to
hr. But there still won't be Latin 2 fonts. I don't think it would
be reasonable to expect I'll carry them in my pocket. :)

> Well that is what I don't like - "it can be reasonably assumed" means
> guessing is involved.  Ideally Acccept-Language should express what
> human language I want, no more and no less.  There is no good reason
> why I shouldn't be able to express "I want that text in Russian, but
> have only Latin2 characters".

Even more than that. I can read Cyrillic when I have to, but it's a hard
going. I'm not sure I can read handwriting at all. But, my understanding
of Serbian is q=1.0 if written in Latin alphabet. The official alphabet
there is Cyrillic and it's reasonable to expect the pages will use it.
I *want* it converted to Latin by my browser, even if I have fonts around.
Why should I have those fonts? To write a word or two and put it in
headings on some pages. You know, tho c00l stuff. :)

> There may be servers that provide 
> transcriptions, and maybe that will be done automatically in the future.

XPG4, I believe, describes such routines for the OS.

-- 
Life is a sexually transmitted disease.

dave@fly.cc.fer.hr
dave@zemris.fer.hr

Received on Saturday, 7 December 1996 14:19:57 UTC