- From: Kjetil Torgrim Homme <kjetilho@ifi.uio.no>
- Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2003 17:13:21 +0200
- To: Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>
- Cc: www-validator@w3.org
[Bjoern Hoehrmann]:
>
> * Kjetil Torgrim Homme wrote:
> > you have to keep the layers separate here. the HTTP transport
> > delivers a Content-Type header to HTML, this has charset
> > "ISO-8859-1" set implicitly. HTML can NOT distinguish between
> > the charset being explicit in HTTP or not, that behaviour is
> > specified in the HTTP standard.
>
> Most major user agents implement what HTML says rather than what
> HTTP/1.1 says, why should the HTML Validator not do what the HTML
> specification requires?
ok, let's look at it:
| The HTTP protocol ([RFC2616], section 3.7.1) mentions ISO-8859-1 as
| a default character encoding when the "charset" parameter is absent
| from the "Content-Type" header field. In practice, this
| recommendation has proved useless
it is not a RECOMMENDATION, it is a REQUIREMENT ("are defined to" --
no leeway there).
| because some servers don't allow a "charset" parameter to be sent,
| and others may not be configured to send the parameter. Therefore,
| user agents must not assume any default value for the "charset"
| parameter.
so therefore this reasoning doesn't apply. you can't ignore a
requirement out of hand.
I'll reiterate: when it comes to specifying how HTTP works, the HTTP
RFC trumps the HTML spec.
--
Kjetil T.
Received on Saturday, 7 June 2003 11:13:30 UTC