lynx-dev Re: LYNX-DEV Lynx bookmark display problems

[Jacob Poon]

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, David Woolley wrote:

> > Also, does HTML 4.0 support multiple document encoding within a single
> > HTML document?  For example:
> > 
> > ......
> > 
> > <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=big-5">
> > 
> > [Big-5 Chinese texts]
> > ......
> > 
> > Will a HTML 4 compilant browser shows first group of texts in ISO-8859-1
> > font, 2nd group of texts in BIG-5 font, and last group of texts in
> > EUC-Japanese font, if all necessary fonts are installed and automatic font
> > switching is available?
> 
> That would be illegal HTML 4.  META...HTTP-Equiv is intended mainly as a hint 
> to
> the web servers as to what to put in the real HTTP headers, although the
> reality is that most browsers act on it directly (and some will restart the 
> document as a result.  In any case, META can only appear in HEAD, and browsers
> aren't required to act on it.
> 
> Changing character set on the fly would break content negotiation, and in
> transit recoding.
> 
> The correct way of doing this is to use a character set that can cope with
> all the languages used.  This could be one with escape codes to switch
> encodings, but the real world of browsers means that it would almost 
> certainly have to be UTF-8.

And more probably, some programs/drivers that translate codepages of fonts
from/to UTF-8 on the fly.  Otherwise you will need to install a lot of
fonts.  :(