RE: BOM

-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas Prilop [mailto:AndreasPrilop2007@trashmail.net] 
Sent: 27. juni 2007 15:50
To: www-validator-css@w3.org
Cc: Jan Eliasen
Subject: Re: BOM

>> When you say that I should define the charset for my css files, you 
>> are tallking about doing it in the html, right?

>Wrong! I gave you an example:
>  http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/temp/dir-ltr.css
>It has
>  Content-Type: text/css; charset=utf-8
Not as far as I can see. When I load that in Firefox, all I get is what you
can see at http://www.eliasen.dk/bom/no_charset.jpg

There is no line describing any charset. If you are talking about a setting
on the web server that must be set, then I believe only few mortal people
have access to change settings ont he web server. I can't change anything at
the server that hosts my domains, anyway.

>> Why not use a BOM with utf-8?
>A BOM is pointless with UTF-8 because there is *no* byte order in UTF-8.
Agreed. But sitll, it is perfectly legal to use it. So I believe the
validator should support it.

>> it even helps the programs that must read the data to know it is utf-8 
>> encoded.
>No. Specify the encoding (charset) properly.
But if the BOM isn't there, how are programs supposed to know if they should
read the file as ASCII and not utf-8? And I am not talking about online
programs, that can read the charset - I am taliking about my text editor
here at home.

>> And I agree ASCII should be just fine - and in my case, it is.
>Almost all CSS files contain only ASCII characters. So why use
>UTF-8 at all?
Because it is the default for many programs.

>> Only problem is that it is automatically saved by VS.NET
>                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> as utf-8 with a BOM
>If you cannot change/adjust this, then we have another example of unusable
software from Microsoft ...
Please... No war of religion.

As a matter of fact, I have just discovered that my css actually has FF FE
as BOM - which is utf-16 little endian, as I understand it. So the
discussion about whether ot not the BOM is necessary for utf-8 is
irrelevant, from my perspective. But this means, that the css validator
doesn't understand that BOM either, which is "worse", right?

>Please quote properly! For example, have a look at
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/dont.html
Well, well - just as you seem to take the quoting part seriously, I take
not-using-exclamation-marks seriously. They often imply a very unfriendly
tone, that I dislike in postings. So please stop using them! (See what I
mean?)

-- 
eliasen