Re: which character set am I using?

At 13:39 01/12/23 -0500, Tim wrote:
>Hi,
>
>How do I work out what character set my editor is using, if it doesn't
>tell me, and I need to declare the correct one in my HTML headers?

Hello Tim,

You mention some of the right things, but not necessarily in the
right order.

>* Hope that I can declare a basic ASCII one, if I don't type anything
>   other than standard typewriter symbols?

Yes, if you are using only English, and no 'smart quotes', then
US-ASCII may just work for you.

>* Assume all documents written on this computer use the same character set?

For quite some setups, this helps a lot. But better replace 'all'
with 'most'.

There is another method:

Validate the document, and try different encodings and have a look
at the relevant characters in the resulting source code
(in a browser that understands UTF-8).

>* Hex-read the document, and find the codes for a few specific characters?

That's usually not necessary, but may be needed if nothing else helps.

If you have some specific example (system, application, document),
you can also ask others.


Regards,   Martin.

Received on Saturday, 5 January 2002 07:03:39 UTC