- From: Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no>
- Date: Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:46:23 +0200
- To: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
- CC: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, "M.T. Carrasco Benitez" <mtcarrascob@yahoo.com>, Travis Leithead <Travis.Leithead@microsoft.com>, Erik van der Poel <erikv@google.com>, "public-html@w3.org" <public-html@w3.org>, "www-international@w3.org" <www-international@w3.org>, Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org>, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>, Chris Wilson <Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com>, Harley Rosnow <Harley.Rosnow@microsoft.com>
Larry Masinter On 09-06-01 00.45: > > Changing the default charset from *something > well known* to *something else* would be a bad > idea -- that would be "default charset switching". > > But changing the charset from "known, please guess" > to "UTF-8" doesn't seem like it is "default > charset switching", it's "default charset > setting". +1 > Setting default charset setting may not be > a good reason for a version indicator, but > it's a supporting reason. +1 > If there were other reasons for having a version > indicator (e.g., to support authoring requirements), > the version indicator could also indicate default > charset UTF8. +1 Maciej Stachowiak Sunday, May 31, 2009 3:35 PM >> I think it would be pretty poor if some indicator of the document >> version (e.g. the doctype or as suggested by someone else a version >> parameter in the Content-Type header) changed the default charset. >> There are two reasons I say this: >> >> 1) It goes against our desire to allow for gradual adoption. If >> changing your doctype declaration could have the side effect of >> changing your charset from Windows-1252 ("Windows Latin-1") to UTF-8, >> that would be a serious risk of breaking upgraded documents. How so? Wouldn't this rather /encourage/ gradual adoption by attracting authors to it? One would probably find that authors would switch doctype even though they did not otherwise rework their pages /only/ to get this effect. Why would a Windows Latin-1 document be switched to HTML 5 doctype if there otherwise were no effect in doing so? In fact, this change could prevent changes purely based on being "cool". The HTML 5 doctype saves authors from typing. This effect would save many of them from typing the charset as well. Such a change would also be very much in line with the "support world languages" principle. [1] >> 2) Doctype and Content-type parameter are both opt-in mechanisms. But >> there's already explicit ways to opt in to UTF-8: the charset >> parameter on Content-type, or a <meta> tag in the document. Explicit >> opt-in seems better to me than implicit, since it's more likely the >> author will be making a change intentionally. [...] What do you mean by saying that DOCTYPE is an opt-in? The draft says that "A DOCTYPE is a mostly useless, but required, header." [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#support-world-languages -- leif halvard silli
Received on Monday, 1 June 2009 01:48:07 UTC