AddDefaultCharset considered harmful (Re: Requesting a revision of RFC3023)

I have filed a bug with Apache bugzilla, asking that the
AddDefaultCharset setting in the httpd.conf file when shipped
be removed/commented out, and the comment fixed, at
http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23421.

I have commented on a related bug that I found, at
http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14513.

I'm copying this list because what we have discussed here is
related. In particular, the comment in httpd.conf file
seems to say some quite strange things:

 >>>>>>>>
#
# Specify a default charset for all pages sent out. This is
# always a good idea and opens the door for future internationalisation
# of your web site, should you ever want it. Specifying it as
# a default does little harm; as the standard dictates that a page
# is in iso-8859-1 (latin1) unless specified otherwise i.e. you
# are merely stating the obvious. There are also some security
# reasons in browsers, related to javascript and URL parsing
# which encourage you to always set a default char set.
#
AddDefaultCharset ISO-8859-1
 >>>>>>>


Regards,    Martin.

Received on Thursday, 25 September 2003 16:35:42 UTC