hmm, on Thu, Jun 28, 2012 at 09:47:00AM -0400, Dave Anderson said that > Using META is _ugly_, especially for specifying a charset (since the > page will be read up through the META element using the charset > specified in the real header or assumed by the browser -- and that > charset could be incompatible with the actual encoding.) Why not just > use the AddDefaultCharset directive to ensure that a charset is > specified in the real header for all pages? Or is this known to break > some browsers that are still in use?
because AddDefaultCharset is a braindead concept. as the apache config file comment says (on debian): # In general, it is only a good idea if you know that all your files # have this encoding. It will override any encoding given in the files # in meta http-equiv or xml encoding tags. setting AddDefaultCharset is a sure way to break any content on your site that happens to be written in the non-default-charset, as the server setting overrides the explicit meta-tag. the webserver has no business telling the client what charset the content will be in. it cannot know. especially for dynamic content. the webserver simply shuffles bytes. sometimes it can give a hint with mime-types, sometimes not. -f -- good words cost no more than bad.
