RE: ISO-8859-1 and meta-tags, etc

>To display the document correctly, browsers have to know the character
>encoding of the document.  If the proper character encoding information
>is provided via HTTP header, browsers are able to know how to display
>the document *before* parsing the document.  But if the character
>encoding information is only available via HTTP-EQUIV, browsers have
>to parse the document to know that information, then try to display
>the document again.  That's one of the disadvantages of HTTP-EQUIV.

I understand this much.  But, I am not really sure why it must retrieve the
document twice from the server.  I would think that once it parses the EQUIV
it could just parse the same file over again.  The data shouldn't have
changed.  But, that is where I am unsure.  Maybe the data is changed somehow
before it is written to the cache.  In any case, correct headers are most
definitely preferable.  I have never looked inside a browser.  I have been
inside Apache quite a bit, though.

The language negotiation is a bit baffling, though.  It is so simple, yet,
so complex.

,David Norris

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Received on Wednesday, 2 September 1998 03:44:09 UTC