[thelist] ?xml &c. declaration

[Jonathon Isaac Swiderski]

   From: Chris Kaminski <chris at setmajer.com>
   Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 21:23:13 +0200

   Thus spake Jonathon Isaac Swiderski:

   > Can anyone on thelist give me a good reason for using the xml declaration, (ie
   > <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>) in a page?  It tosses IE6 into
   > bass-ackward mode,

   That would be the main reason I use it: when IE6 is getting caught in
   filters for IE4-5 but doesn't need the 'fixes' for those browsers.

I had the opposite problem: IE6 was creating a problem that didn't exist in 5
(or at least, wasn't the same; see below).

   > as tom just mentioned it occasionally gets displayed as text or forces older
   > browsers to thinking it's not HTML & trying to download the page.

   I'm wondering if those glitches are really due to the <?xml?> declaration or
   if perhaps there's a server configuration issue going on, as I've not
   experienced that problem. Then again, the browser I heard this in connection
   with was Mac IE4.5, which I haven't seen in our logs in over 12 months.
   YMMV.

Found a copy of IE4.01/Mac in one of the other labs in the division where I
work.  Interesting thing:  while IE5/Win doesn't have the same problem with the
graphic that i had with 6 in backwards mode (it has a *different* problem :( ),
4.01 did. (namely, the middle graphic on the left was dropped.  what makes this
graphic different from the other two?  this in the css:
img.vlad {
  width:80%;
  height:80%;
}
IE 5 doesn't drop it; it just doesn't take the 'height' value.  It actually
looks kinda like it enlarges it a bit, but that's probably just an illusion.)

   > I'd like to leave this line in, as it *is* part of the recommendation for
   > XHTML (or seems to be; see http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#docconf under the
   > "example of a minimal XHTML document."), but I can't think of any reason I
   > should leave it in.

   [snip NN 4.0x issues with meta charset declarations]

   Probably the best approach to charset issues is to just configure the server
   to send the proper charset in an HTTP header and leave it out of the
   document altogether. AFAIK, that's a perfectly valid approach, though the
   W3C validator does issue a 'warning' of sorts.

Nope, nothing.  Put a
AddCharset iso-8859-1 .html
line in my .htaccess, and dropped the <meta> tag, and had nary a peep from the
validator.

--
Jonathon Isaac Swiderski       jswiders at cs.oberlin.edu
cs.oberlin.edu/~jswiders \\ members.evolt.org/jswiders

Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting
what you get.