Re: charset issues

# Lacking any new mechanisms, servers should assume the form data is in the
# same encoding as the form document. Maybe this is the state-of-the-art
# anyway. In any case, this is obviously inefficient because if the server
# serves documents with different encodings it places an undue burden on the
# server. It would be better to tag the return data so that the server does
# not need to look at the original document.

Gavin Nicol suggested the method used by EBT as a short term
workaround if you're using application/x-www-form-urlencoded (either
because the browser doesn't implement application/form-data or because
you want a GET URL):

  include a hidden field in the form, where the field value is a
  string with characters in it that, when sent back, can be used to
  figure out what charset the rest of the form was typed with.

This poses no compatibility difficulty.

Larry

Received on Saturday, 21 December 1996 03:24:38 UTC