Re: charset parameter (fwd)

At 2001-07-26T13:11+0100, Nick Kew wrote:-

[> Terje Bless wrote:-]

[META]
> >	 and HTML just sez it's supposed to be
> > read by _servers_ to initialize the HTTP header... :-(
>
> "supposed to be"?  Oh dear.

Only in that servers MAY do that (in the case of http-equiv). What the UA
does is unspecified (except with respect to the assorted dubious uses of
it in later versions of HTML).

> > The lack of a "charset" parameter on the HTTP 1.1 "Content-Type" header
> > field means that you should assume it is there with a value of "ISO-889-1"
> > according to the HTTP 1.1 RFC.

Yes, although the HTML 4 Recommendation appears to require that UAs use a
modified version of HTTP 1.1 in which this assumption is not made.

> Oh dear.  Doesn't that logic give us:
>
> Content-Type: image/png; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> or even
> Content-Type: application/x-hyperlens-object; charset=iso-8859-1

Fortunately not: the rule applies only to text subtypes.


Tim Bagot

Received on Thursday, 26 July 2001 09:28:12 UTC