[thelist] Character Encoding Mismatch

[rudy]

> CFMX outputs utf-8 by default

nice to know -- what about earlier versions?

good of macromedia to be thinking on our behalf, eh

they're even sometimes right


> You can put this at the top of your Application.cfm file,
> to change the output to ISO-8859-1
>
>  <cfcontent type="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
>
> then you can leave your meta tag alone.

i don't get it

does the cfcontent create a meta tag? or some kind of http header?

if so, it seems kind of superfluous to code a meta tag that says the same
thing

however, please note this is an important question, because the charset is
mandatory for w3c validation

if i code one, and use cfcontent, will i get two?

(yeah, i know i can test this myself, but maybe you can save me the agro)


> this is of course, if your site uses ISO-8859-1 and not utf-8....

okay, i'll bite, and my questions aren't just directed at you, morgan

what's the diff, and why would i want to use utf-8?

the w3c says i should be using ISO 10646

what's browser support for utf-8 like?  i've had no problems with ISO 8859

and here's a real challenge --

every time i go visit aardvark's article http://evolt.org/entities my
browser (ie5) pops up an alert that says

    Internet Explorer Install On Demand

    To display this page correctly you need to download
    and install the following components:

       Uniscribe

   Download size: 126K

and yet the meta tag in that article is  charset=iso-8859-1

i even ran that page through rex swain's http viewer, and i don't see any
http header that states character sets -- is there even such a thing?

so what's up with that alert?  is ie5 detecting the use of a unicode entity
in the body of the article (apparently, there are a few <grin>)?

what should i do so that i do not foist this alert on my users?

rudy