Re: charset parameter (long)

CN=Bruce Kahn/O=Iris@IRIS (iris!CN=Bruce_Kahn/O=Iris@uunet.uu.net)
Thu, 12 Jan 95 12:28:54 EST

Francois Yergeau wrote:
>>One idea, is for a HTML <charset> tag that would take precedence over the
>>MIME header:
>>
>> <html>
>> <charset=xxx>
>> <head> <title> DOCUMENT TITLE GOES HERE </title> </head>
>> <body>
>> <h1> MAJOR HEADING GOES HERE </h1>
>> THE REST OF THE DOCUMENT GOES HERE
>> </body>
>> </html>
>I like this, but will it fly? What about multi-charset documents?

Not very well if the text until <charset=xxx> is in one charset and the
rest is in another. In order for a browser to grok the charset entry it must
be able to parse to it. Given that, this scheme would require the authors to
either write in two different character sets (one for the page and one for
<charset>) or we would have to hack the scheme to be something too gross to
consider. Also, do we really want to get into the business of multi-charsets
w/in 1 document?? I hope not otherwise all the discussion on a header line
with the desired charset for negotiating on a perfered format is for
nothing. (I ask for a document in EUC but it has JIS or SJIS intermixed; how
could I grok those parts?)

I think providing the character set information is better left to
negotiation between the browser and client (as discussed so far). I like
Dans suggestion about having the preference rating but Im not sure how useful
it would be over say sending multiple accept-charsets in order of preferece
(ie: 1st is the most prefered, the last is least prefered).

Bruce
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