Re: [tlug] Firefox 3.0.1 doesn't respect <meta http-equiv="content-type">

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Curt Sampson writes:

 > On 2008-09-09 16:13 +0900 (Tue), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > 
 > > I observe ruefully that the concept of a default charset is pretty
 > > broken given the priority of the server headers, the meta tag, and
 > > browser guesstimates.  Oh well.
 > 
 > Well, I used to think that the priority (server header over meta tag)
 > ought to be reversed, but now I wonder if it's not correct. After all,
 > I'm surely not the only one that has written a server that does encoding
 > conversion on the fly based on the client.

Yeah, that's a point.  But ...  if the priority were reversed,
converting proxies/servers would fail spectacularly unless they
filtered the META element.  Fixing up a META wouldn't be that hard,
not for this special case.  So they'd do it, I think.

Also, note in the the spec
(http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#adef-http-equiv):

http-equiv = name [CI]
    This attribute may be used in place of the name attribute. HTTP
    servers use this attribute to gather information for HTTP response
    message headers.

This may be a W3C frain bart, but pretty clearly either the server
should respect http-equiv or they should fix it.  The spec also states
"User agents are not required to support meta data mechanisms.  For
those that choose to support meta data, this specification does not
define how meta data should be interpreted."  Again, if I were a self-
respecting server, I'd sure as hell make sure that anything I specify
in other ways (ie, HTTP response headers) did not conflict with
META-supplied information in the content stream.