html forms accept-charset

I am writing about html and encodings and I notice that most references on the
i18n site and elsewhere gloss over encodings declaration with respect to forms.

Our faq on multilingual forms doesn't talk about the declaration. Nor does the
workgroup charset page.
(They were among the first places I looked for a guideline.)

What we do say is we recommend using utf-8 and hope that browsers give back
what is sent out.
We don't mention that forms can specify an accept-charset and whether they
should (in addition to the above) or not.

The standard says:

"The default value for this attribute is the reserved string "UNKNOWN". User
agents may interpret this value as the character encoding that was used to
transmit the document containing this FORM element."

Perhaps this is good enough, although we know that the browser for a number of
reasons can have the wrong or at least a different encoding than the author
intended. I suspect it is better to
make it explicit.

So, my question is:
1) Should we be more concrete about accept-charset in the <form> statement, and
should we:

a) recommend not using it and just go with what goes around comes around?

b) recommend using it? if so with what values? 
utf-8 only? utf-8 higher than others on the list?

2) Do browsers follow the accept-charset? ie. Will they always convert to utf-8
if that is specified?
(even if the page was in another charset?)

I am asking if the following example is recommended (note accept-charset):

<FORM action="http://www.xencraft.com" method="post" accept-charset="UTF-8">
    <P>
    Name: <INPUT type="text" name="firstname"><BR>
    <INPUT type="submit" value="Send"> <INPUT type="reset">
    </P>
 </FORM>


or better to use accept-charset="UTF-8;q=1.0,*;q=0.5" ?

3) Has anyone done any testing around this?

4) Someone (after it is answered) want to convert this to a faq?
Add it to the guidelines doc?

tex


-- 
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Tex Texin   cell: +1 781 789 1898   mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com
Xen Master                          http://www.i18nGuy.com
                         
XenCraft		            http://www.XenCraft.com
Making e-Business Work Around the World
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Received on Sunday, 28 September 2003 17:10:52 UTC