[Bug 12054] New: clearly state that there must be only one character encoding declaration in a document

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12054

           Summary: clearly state that there must be only one character
                    encoding declaration in a document
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P3
         Component: HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson)
        AssignedTo: ian@hixie.ch
        ReportedBy: mike@w3.org
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org


Problem One: There does not seem to be any clearly stated normative
document-conformance requirement in the spec that prohibits a document from
containing multiple meta elements with an http-equiv attribute in the Encoding
declaration state.

The relevant document-conformance requirements that the spec does normatively
state are:

  A. "There must not be more than one meta element with a charset attribute per
document."

  B. "If the document contains a meta element with an http-equiv attribute in
the Encoding declaration state, then the document must not contain a meta
element with the charset attribute present."

Problem Two:  Statement B above makes it sound as if a character encoding
declaration given by a meta element with an http-equiv attribute in the
Encoding declaration state always takes precedence over a character encoding
declaration given by a meta element with a charset attribute. That is, it would
seem to require that even if a meta element with a charset attribute occurs in
document order before a meta element with an http-equiv attribute in the
Encoding declaration state, then the meta element with a charset attribute
should be reported as an error. Which seems wrong.

Suggested fix:

I do see that the definition of "character encoding declaration" includes a
bulleted list prefixed with "The following restrictions apply to character
encoding declarations", and an items in that list that reads, "There can only
be one character encoding declaration in the document."

http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/semantics.html#character-encoding-declaration

Is that meant to be a normative document-conformance requirement? Or if not,
could it please be made into one? e.g., "There must be only one character
encoding declaration in the document."

If the spec clearly states "There must be only one character encoding
declaration in the document" somewhere, then there would be no need for either
statement A or B above, and they could just be removed, and then Problems One
and Two above go away also.

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Received on Sunday, 13 February 2011 19:19:44 UTC