Re: charset=us-ascii mandatory?

On Sun, 13 May 2007, Frank Ellermann wrote:

> The effect of omitting item 4 is similar to "assume utf-8", minus
> tons of misleading error messages.

No, rather the opposite. Item 4 in my list was validation process after a 
data error (no info on encoding, no applicable default) had been detected 
and reported. Omitting it means that you only report the data error and 
encourage the user into fixing it and trying again. Performing validation 
with some assumed encoding is quite similar to "assume utf-8", just with a 
different encoding.

One might criticize the approach of only reporting the data error on 
_other_ grounds, such as the practical point that in the vast majority of 
cases, useful validation _can_ be performed.

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Sunday, 13 May 2007 20:04:07 UTC