Re: Character set (charset) validation

Markus Kramer wrote:

> All started when I looked at my (validated) HTML-page from a
> Macintosh...
> (I had no character set denoted.)
> I assumed Isolatin-1.
> The Macintosh assumed it's own charater set and displayed a mess.
>
> So I put a META-tag in my document to denote the character set:
> <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=....">
>
> When I tried "charset=isolatin-1" nothing happend.

I believe the name is "latin-1" not "isolatin-1"

>
> When I tried "charset=ISO-8859-1" The Macintosh displayed every
> character correct!
> I was happy.
>
> Now I want to make a suggestion for improving the validator:
>
> The validator did not report the wrong name (isolatin-1) because he will
> report *any* string as a 'character set'.
> For example
> <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=mumble">
> will result in
>
> Document Checked
> ...
>      Character encoding: mumble
> ...
>
> I propose that the validator provides a (link to a) list of common
> character sets, which I have looked for but could not find.
> The validator could produce a warning, if someone (like me) puts in
> "mumble" for a charset.
> Like:
>     Your Character Encoding "mumble" was not found in our <a ...>list of
> common character sets</a>.
>     Please check your spelling or notify us of a new common character
> set.

Wonderful suggestion.

>
>
> I found in this newgroup an old (1996) discussion about isolatin-1
> beeing the default character set of the web (which was considered a bad
> thing).
> As the Macinotosh does not assume isolatin-1 beeing the default, the
> validator could issue a warning, if there is no character set given.
>
> Markus

Roger W. Winget

Received on Thursday, 23 March 2000 19:13:52 UTC