Re: review of content type rules by IETF/HTTP community

At 23:03 +0200 UTC, on 2007-08-21, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:

> 2007-08-21 22:04:26 +0200 Sander Tekelenburg:

[... charset in file name extension overrides @charset]

>> I'm less sure now that I understand what exactly you propose. [...]
>
> You said what I meant above: «And the file name's charset info overrides
>the document's meta http-equiv's charset value.» This of course only counts
>for offline documents.

OK, sorry for being dense. I am beginning to get what you're saying now. I
thought you were suggesting to serve files with the charset info in their
names and do away with Content-Type altogether. But you're talking about
local situations only. You suggest that browsers for *local* files browsers
treat charset names in file name extensions as authorative, overriding
@charset, which would result in more authors testing the charset they serve
with.

That definitely does sound like a good idea to me. It may not solve
everything, but it does seem likely that this would decrease the number of
incorrect charset values. I like it.

(I wonder if browsers should also insert the charset in the file name upon
saving a document. If browsers would do that, that would make it more likely
that authors would become aware of charsets. Charset info tends to get lost
anyway when a served document is suddenly viewed locally, so browsers should
be saving that info with the document anyway, for all users. (Problem is that
it would probably not mean anything to most users, so it might not be ideal
default behaviour. For most users this is the sort of magic you want to keep
hidden and 'just work'.))

[...]

>> But Ian's 5th  point, raised in
>>
>><http://www.w3.org/mid/Pine.LNX.4.64.0708202003070.8981@dhalsim.dreamhost.com>,
>> remains, doesn't it? [...]
>
> [...]  I cannot see at all why it applies.

You're right, it doesn't :) I had just misunderstood what you meant.

> Ian is speaking about putting a file on a «popular site», that is: putting
>files online. While I am only proposing a to use new/existing mechanism for
>offline authoring of documents which could be put on that popular site. This
>mechanism should on the contrary better the situation, in that the author
>actually got to test how  this "charset mapping" works before putting it
>online.

Agreed.

I wonder which spec this should belong in though...?


[In case someone is wondering: it was pointed out to me off-list that this
was probably not yet implemented in the latest free iCab version; only yet in
the registered-users version.]


-- 
Sander Tekelenburg
The Web Repair Initiative: <http://webrepair.org/>

Received on Wednesday, 22 August 2007 01:48:16 UTC