[ESW Wiki] Update of "geoEncoding" by DavidClarke

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The following page has been changed by DavidClarke:
http://esw.w3.org/topic/geoEncoding


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  Different character encodings used to be one of the biggest obstacles of interoperability between computers.
  
+ === Be sure other people can see your message ===
+ For example :
+ If a web site expects to display the following using the UTF-8 encoding
+ http://www.dragonthoughts.com/w3/hiraganautf8.gif but the web browser incorrectly assumes that the page uses ISO8859-1 then the following will appear
+ http://www.dragonthoughts.com/w3/hiraganautf8asiso8859-1.gif

+ 
  == Interoperability - or how not to make content unreadable? ==
- 
- === Be sure other people can see your message ===
+ One of the simplest steps to prevent the incorrect display of text is to include explicit information in documents or web pages about their encoding.
+ When the document has been saved it is  essential to check it.
  
  === Be sure you can read information from other sources ===
  
@@ -33, +39 @@

  Internally, computers store characters as numeric codes. The relationship between these numbers and the characters they represent is the character encoding.
  
  == Why does this cause problems? ==
- When different computer systems use different character encodings it is often produces an unreadable result. For example :
+ When different computer systems use different character encodings it is often produces an unreadable result. 
- http://www.dragonthoughts.com/w3/hiraganautf8asiso8859-1.gif should appear as http://www.dragonthoughts.com/w3/hiraganautf8.gif

  
  == Why should I care? ==
  If other people need to read your content, then the character encoding settings must be compatible, of the recipients can't read it.
@@ -47, +52 @@

  
  == Background ==
  Historically, different types of computer system from different countries or manufacturers have used different character encodings.
- 
- '''[[RI''' This heading should be either 'answer' or 'background' for an FAQ. Take note that that will limit the level of nesting you go to.]]
  
  Most people have received an email or other document from a foreign source, that displays as apparently random characters. This is often because the receiving program is not configured to support the same encoding '''[[RI''' same what? You haven't defined or described 'encoding' yet. (Nor do you later ;-) ]] of the original document.
  

Received on Wednesday, 4 January 2006 10:45:56 UTC