On Thu, 3 Oct 2002, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: > On Thu, 3 Oct 2002, Reuven M. Lerner wrote: > > > >>>>> "Tzafrir" == Tzafrir Cohen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > Tzafrir> There are a number of incompatible ways to encode Hebrew > > Tzafrir> (e.g: ISO-8859-8/visual, cp1255/logical and UTF-8). So > > Tzafrir> simply saying that the language is Hebrew is not enough > > Tzafrir> for the browser. > > > > No one is suggesting that the HTTP Content-type header should indicate > > a language.Rather, the Content-type header indicates a character > > set, and in some places an encoding as well.For example: > > > > Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8 # Unicode, UTF-8 > > Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-8 # Hebrew + English > > Content-type: text/html; charset=windows-1255 # Heb/Eng Windows encoding > > > > A browser receiving the above headers knows not only that the content > > is in Hebrew and English (or in Unicode), but also what the encoding > > is (and thus how to display it). > > > > Naming the encoding explicitly would only be a problem on a site that > > uses multiple encodings.For example, if your site has some pages in > > UTF-8 and others in Latin-1 and still others in ISO-8859-8, then you > > would be in trouble.But in such a (rare) case, you can remove the > > default encoding and allow people to use meta tags.
using <html lang="he" dir="rtl"> appears to override the charset header. > > Quite rare indeed. The default configuration of apache (or at least: the > one that comes with Mandrake): > > http://www.gadot.org.il/manual/ > > http://www.gadot.org.il/manual/index.html.en > http://www.gadot.org.il/manual/index.html.ja.jis > > Not to mention all sorts of sites with multi-charset content. > > > > > On a site that has a single, consistent encoding, it's nice to have > > the server take care of such things for you, avoiding the need for > > meta tags. > > (you mean: set everything to UTF-8) > > > > > Tzafrir> Setting a server-wide default to a certain charset is > > Tzafrir> certainly not a wise default. I would consider it a > > Tzafrir> misconfiguration of RH's side. > > > > Given that this is the W3C's preferred way of doing things, it strikes > > me as a pretty reasonable approach, actually.The implied default of > > Latin-1 strikes me as pretty short-sighted in a world where a large > > (and growing) number of Internet users come from outside of the US. > > So you have my opinion about this standard, and how predictable it leaves > things > > -- Thanks, Uri http://translation.israel.net ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
