RE: Proposed addition to Display problems caused by the UTF-8 BOM

> From: Addison Phillips [mailto:addison@yahoo-inc.com] 
> Sent: 25 July 2007 17:00


> Some applications, such as text editors, look for the BOM as 
> a signature 
> indicating the use of a Unicode encoding. These applications, such as 
> Windows Notepad, will automatically add a UTF-8 BOM to any 
> file you save 
> as UTF-8 so that they can detect it later. Browsers, however, 
> don't look for the BOM 

Actually they may do.  See http://www.w3.org/International/tests/results/results-utf8-recognition  which indicates that IE6 recognises the encoding from the UTF-8 signature.

> and Web pages always need to declare the 
> character encoding 
> explicitly at the top of the file or in the HTTP header, making a BOM 
> unnecessary (and, as noted above, sometimes harmful).

RI

Received on Wednesday, 25 July 2007 17:35:31 UTC