<META tag (was Re: GSM and Unicode)

From: YTang0648@aol.com
Date: Tue Nov 04 2003 - 17:18:31 EST

  • Next message: John Cowan: "Re: GSM and Unicode"

    In a message dated 11/4/2003 2:03:35 PM Pacific Standard Time, JD@BD8.COM
    writes:
    This styled message contained (thanks to Microsoft) this line in the head:

    > <META charset=UTF-8 http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html;
    > charset=utf-8">

    So far as I can tell, this is gibberish and ought to be

    > <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

    My browser seems to agree with me, but I await correction.

    JD
    According to the HTML standard (see
    http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#h-7.4.4 ) the right way to specify the charset in html is to use the
    http-equiv attribute in META tag with a value "Content-Type" and put the charset
    value after the "text/html; charset=" in the value of the content attribute.
    The HTML specification does not specify the order between http-equiv and content
    attribute nither does it prohibit other attribute (such as charset=UTF-8 ) to
    be place. A good browser implementation will simply look at the http-equiv
    and the content and ignore the charset attribute of the <meta tag. The charset=
    should have no bad effect unless it specify a charset which is differ than the
    one in the content attribute.

    I believe currently Mozilla / Netscape 7 handle that correctly. I don't think
    Netscape 4.x and below handle that part correctly if my memory is right about
    the code that I reviewed 7.5 years ago when we were working on Netscape 2.0
    development. We have a bug about http-equiv and content ordering issue (if page
    place the content attribute before the http-equiv attribute) in the early
    stage of Mozilla developement. But either I or Shanjian Li fixed that for at
    least several years already. Not sure about IE.

    ==================================
    Frank Yung-Fong Tang
    System Architect, Iñtërnâtiônàl Dèvélôpmeñt, AOL Intèrâçtívë Sërviçes
    AIM:yungfongta mailto:ytang0648@aol.com Tel:650-937-2913
    Yahoo! Msg: frankyungfongtan

    John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that
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