Re: LYNX-DEV Charset names in ac105

[Foteos Macrides]

=?KOI8-R?B?4c7E0sXKIP7F0s7P1w==?= <address@hidden> wrote:
>On Fri, 9 Jan 1998, Hynek Med wrote:
>
>> Probably with the merge of Fote's new codepages, names of some character
>> sets have changed in ac105, producing a bit of confusion. Some of Windows
>> charsets are now named Windows-xxxx, some cpxxxx. I think this should be
>> unified as Windows-xxxx, as it used to be (IIRC). If there's an agreement
>> on this, I can produce a patch.
>
>Registered (by IANA) character set names are not subject of agreement. 
>Just check latest IANA list at
>ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/character-sets

        Lynx v2.7.2 treats cp#, cp-#, ibm# and windows-# as synonyms
for MicroSoft charsets, so that only the # distinguishes them.  The
IANA registry is incomplete and does not correspond well with what
is actually being used as the values of charset parameters in META
elements and/or Content-Type headers.  The merge of v2.7.2 into
the devel code did not fully incorporate their handling as synonyms (I
don't know why not).  In v2.7.2, the intent is to maximize the chances
of the intended charset actually being used, whether or not it's in
agreement with what's been registered with IANA.

        Note that MicroSoft cp# and IBM ibm# charsets with the same
# are not identical in all cases (see the 1997-11-08 entry about that
in the v2.7.2 CHANGES file).

        Note also that a number of other commonly (mis)used values for
charsets are accepted as synonyms in v2.7.2, e.g, for koi8-r and the
the CJK charsets.  Basically, anything I encountered on the Web in the
past year has been incorporated as synonyms for the intended charsets.
The "bad charset value" problem is as bad as the "bad HTML" problem,
and getting Lynx to do what's intended (if it can be done :) was treated
as more important than being fully standards-conformant in this release.

                                Fote

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 Foteos Macrides            Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research
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