Re: charset parameter

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Terje Bless wrote:

> The issue is that the transport protocol sez that an absense of an explicit
> charset parameter on the Content-Type means "ISO-8859-1"; HTML or XML rules
> don't apply here. When it comes time to parse the markup, you already have
> a charset; the XML/HTML rules do not govern HTTP.

well, that's handy.

I've always wondered how you define the charset for the line that
defines the charset so that you can interpret it.

> In practice you have to decide between "Assume ISO-8859-1 as that's what
> /people/ tend to assume" or "Assume nothing as people will get it wrong
> some part of the time".

I don't see how you can ever assume nothing.

L.

<L.Wood@surrey.ac.uk>PGP<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/>