Charset policy or?

hi -- I came to wonder about the policy behind which encodings
(charsets) that the Validator support. Is the reason for not supporting
the very common (on ourplatform) x-mac-encodings political (for instance
the result of a puristic wish to only support the IANA registred
charsets) or is the reason practical. (If it is both, then I would like
to know what is the most important reason.)

I ask because I was very suprised to find out that x-mac-roman was not
accepted. Instead the validator adviced me to use 'macintosh' as charset
name. We Mac users live in this very perfect world where all encodings
are named x-mac-something. Hardly any of us know or rember that there
exist a kind of ascii parellell called just 'macintosh'. Mozilla/Firefox
doesn't offer this encoding. And of all programs I have used only the
venerable Cyberdog (remember that?) used 'macintosh', and only when
sending e-mail -- that very thing was the reason I stopped using it
since it made it incompatible other mac mailers.

(PS: I checked previouis discussions about this issue. Please refrain
from advicing me/us about text editors ...)

Received on Friday, 22 April 2005 19:28:44 UTC