Re: Question of the Week -- CSS and character Encoding

Russ,

Looks good!

A couple suggestions:

1) Maybe in the background add a note that it won't really be left to chance,
since there are rules that determine the encoding if it isn't specified in the
sheet.

2) Instead of quoting the spec, perhaps restate it in your own words.
a) I think people look to faqs because they dont understand spec-speak.
b) Your version will be more clear. (I am sure!)

c) The spec uses that hateful 2 steps of indirection to references, and you can
link [charsets] directly from your text, which is more useful if not usable.
Otherwise people have to figure out that the quote of "[charsets]" is the same
as the link you provide further on.

Anyone want to create a separate faq on where non-ascii characters can be used
in a stylesheet?
Maybe we should add one sentence in this faq saying where non-ascii might be
used? Otherwise people might wonder why bother with an encoding declaration?

tex

Russ Rolfe wrote:
> 
> Here is my submission for this week.
> 
> Regards, Russ
> 
> -=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> 
> Question?
> 
> How do I declare the character encoding of a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) style sheet?
> 
> Answer:
> 
> Just as you should always declare the character encoding for an HTML document <http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/charset.html#h-5.2.2> you should also declare the character encoding for a separate external style sheet file.  This way it is not left to chance on how the style sheet's encoding will be interpreted.
> 
> To set the character encoding you may use the "@charset at-rule".  Its syntax is:
> 
>       @charset <IANA defined charset name>
> 
> The CSS2 specification states:
> 
> "At most one @charset rule may appear in an external style sheet -- it must not appear in an embedded style sheet -- and it must appear at the very start of the document, not preceded by any characters. After "@charset", authors specify the name of a character encoding. The name must be a charset name as described in the IANA registry (See [IANA]. Also, see [CHARSETS] for a complete list of charsets)."
> 
> The important thing to note here is that this command must appear at the very beginning of the file -- even before any comments.
> 
> Thus an example of labeling your CSS file as UTF-8 encoded would be:
> 
>       @charset "UTF-8"
> 
> References:
> 
>     CSS 2.1 @charset spec    http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/syndata.html#x60
>     CSS 2.0 @charset spec    http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/syndata.html#q23
>     IANA Charset Names       http://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets
>     HTML 4.0 Specify the Character Encoding
>                  http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/charset.html#h-5.2.2

-- 
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Tex Texin   cell: +1 781 789 1898   mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com
Xen Master                          http://www.i18nGuy.com
                         
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Received on Wednesday, 24 September 2003 05:52:23 UTC