[Bug 15359] Make BOM trump HTTP

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=15359

theimp@iinet.net.au changed:

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                 CC|                            |theimp@iinet.net.au

--- Comment #4 from theimp@iinet.net.au 2012-07-05 03:12:07 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #0 & comment #2)

I personally don't think that a byte order mark (*especially* the so-called
UTF-8 Byte Order Mark) should override the HTTP charset as specified. However,
I am not interested in formally objecting to this idea, as I will agree that it
seems (and history has shown) to be more likely that an author (or server) will
incorrectly specify the HTTP charset, than that they will incorrectly add an
invalid BOM (this is less true of UTF-8, where the BOM is not actually a BOM).

Note that, for example, CSS uses different mandatory rules to what is proposed
here ( http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/syndata.html#charset ); this might cause great
confusion for authors with an incomplete understanding of these rules.

(In reply to comment #3)

I think that it is an *extremely* bad idea to require that user agents must not
be able to handle documents in whatever way their users have configured them to
- rightly, wrongly, or otherwise.

I cannot emphasize this enough. Not all user agents are browsers, and even
browsers should be configured first and foremost by their users. By all means,
make it a primary heuristic; forbid even suggesting a switch and require an
explicit action by the user, if need be; but if the user says, "no, do this",
the browser should do so unless actual harm can be demonstrated and no
challenge is offered.

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Received on Thursday, 5 July 2012 03:12:09 UTC