[Bug 10890] i18n comment : Allow utf-16 meta encoding declarations

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10890

--- Comment #3 from Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> 2010-10-04 11:42:06 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #2)
> Exactly. So it's not an issue for character detection. However, my point is
> that there are usability issues. (a) Without a meta element you can't tell the
> encoding by visual inspection. 

My point is that you actually can't inspect this visually. If you open a file
in a text editor and you see <meta charset="utf-16"> how do you know whether:
 1) The file had a UTF-16 BOM and was encoded in UTF-16 and the meta has no
effect.
OR
 2) The file didn't have an UTF-16 BOM and was encoded in an ASCII-superset
encoding and the meta would make a UA treat the file as being UTF-8-encoded.
?

> (b) People will continue to use these meta elements for UTF-16. 

I think we should try to change things so that people will use UTF-8 and not
continue to use UTF-16.

> (c) Because the UTF-16 rules for meta are different from other encodings,
> the author has to always remember to handle UTF-16 in a special way.

This will not be a problem if authors always use UTF-8 and, as result, don't
use UTF-16.

-- 
Configure bugmail: http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are on the CC list for the bug.
You reported the bug.

Received on Monday, 4 October 2010 11:42:09 UTC