[whatwg/encoding] Allow other encodings (#207)

Right now, the specification states "User agents must not support any other encodings or labels". This seems overly restrictive to me. While I understand there could be reasons for not allowing specific encodings for security reasons, many unsupported encodings (IBM437, IBM850 and IBM858, to name just a few) are completely harmless. The gap between "must support" (IBM866) and "must not support" (IBM437) is rather huge.

I would suggest one of
1. not forbidding user agents from supporting other encodings, or
2. adding a list of encodings that must not be supported (with encodings that are not on either list being optionally supported), or
3. adding a list of optionally supported encodings.

I'm specifically not asking you to add more mandatory encodings (although I wouldn't object to it in case of IBM437 either). If you're going to add a list of optionally supported encodings, please include IBM437 in it, which I consider to be a highly valuable encoding for web browsers to support, especially for plain text files, but also for HTML files (because they do get encoded as IBM437 on rare occasions).

The reason I'm asking this is that right now, the wording of the specification is a reason for browser makers explicitly not to add other encodings, including IBM437.

-- 
You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/whatwg/encoding/issues/207

Received on Monday, 20 April 2020 21:45:17 UTC