Re: Comments on: "Character Set" Considered Harmful

Dave Raggett (dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com)
Wed, 26 Apr 95 12:35:34 EDT

> Can anyone think of cases where the charset parameter will *not*
> suffice? I have a nagging feeling, but nothing firm in my mind...

There is perhaps a blurred distinction between character set and
content-encoding. I can imagine some one inventing a novel means
of encoding characters from a mix of well known and completely
novel character sets. To handle this the browser would download
a lexical analyser over the network along the lines of SUN's
HotJava. This would be combined with downloadable fonts for the
novel character sets.

To make this concrete, consider a novel mathematical notation or
perhaps novel notations for music or dance. The SGML parser is
not effected, as the character encoding is handled by a protocol
layer below the SGML entity manager.

-- Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> url = http://www.hpl.hp.co.uk/people/dsr
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