Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

**Rijk van Geijtenbeek** · Jul 23 '05, 10:37 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

On 4 Nov 2004 05:11:49 -0800, Ronald Fischer <ronaldf@eml.cc > wrote:
[color=blue]
> When I create a new page using Netscape Composer, it always includes
> a meta tag[/color]

This is a very tool-specific question. Are you talking about the ancient
Netscape 4 Composer BTW? It might be useful to try to find a group
dedicated to the tool you use.
[color=blue]
> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;
> charset=ISO-8859-1">
>
> in the header. I would like to have it charset=us-ascii instead.[/color]

As US-ASCII is a subset of ISO-8859-1, changing this should make no
difference whatsoever to the display of webpages.

--
Rijk van Geijtenbeek

The Web is a procrastination apparatus:
It can absorb as much time as is required to ensure that you
won't get any real work done. - J.Nielsen

**Lauri Raittila** · Jul 23 '05, 10:37 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

in comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, Ronald Fischer wrote:[color=blue]
> When I create a new page using Netscape Composer, it always includes
> a meta tag
>
> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
>
> in the header. I would like to have it charset=us-ascii instead. How can I
> do this?[/color]

Why would you want to do that?
[color=blue]
> An alternative would be to tell Netscape to leave out the charset
> attribute altogether, because this would then mean "us-ascii" by default,
> but I don't know how to do it either.[/color]

IIRC, default is ISO-8859-1, not us-ascii, in HTTP.
[color=blue]
> I know the View/Character coding menu, but there is no "us-ascii" to choose
> from, only iso-8859-1.[/color]

US-ASCII is subset of iso-8859-1. So nothing will be missing, even if one
uses iso-8859-1

--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>

**Pierre Goiffon** · Jul 23 '05, 10:37 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

"Ronald Fischer" <ronaldf@eml.cc > a écrit dans le message de
news:219750c.04 11040511.721143 8f@posting.goog le.com[color=blue]
> When I create a new page using Netscape Composer[/color]
(...)

If you refer to the old Netscape Communicator composer, or the one that is
packaged with Netscape 6 or 7, then i hardly recommend that you switch to
NVU :

NVU

http://www.nvu.com/

It's the up to date Mozilla Composer, including cascades for CSS and many
more features.
Free, but not already in the 1.0 state (but always better than the old
composer)

**Alan J. Flavell** · Jul 23 '05, 10:37 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004, Lauri Raittila wrote:
[color=blue]
> in comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, Ronald Fischer wrote:
>[color=green]
> > in the header. I would like to have it charset=us-ascii instead.
> > How can I do this?[/color]
>
> Why would you want to do that?[/color]

It's an oddball request, indeed, even if it's technically correct.
[color=blue][color=green]
> > An alternative would be to tell Netscape to leave out the charset
> > attribute altogether, because this would then mean "us-ascii" by default,[/color]
>
> IIRC, default is ISO-8859-1, not us-ascii, in HTTP.[/color]

It's not that simple!

There's a generic RFC that claims that the default for all text/*
MIME types is us-ascii - I forget the number, it shouldn't be hard to
find...

There's an HTTP specification (RFC2616) that claims that the default
for an HTTP transaction is iso-8859-1

And there's an HTML/4.01 specification that claims that there is -no-
default for HTML.

As you can see, these claims are not entirely compatible with each
other :-{
[color=blue][color=green]
> > from, only iso-8859-1.[/color]
>
> US-ASCII is subset of iso-8859-1. So nothing will be missing, even
> if one uses iso-8859-1[/color]

Yes, but there may then be coded characters present that aren't legal
in ASCII; presumably (but it would have been better if the questioner
had been explicit about such details) that is what the questioner was
trying to avoid.

**Jukka K. Korpela** · Jul 23 '05, 10:37 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

ronaldf@eml.cc (Ronald Fischer) wrote:
[color=blue]
> When I create a new page using Netscape Composer, it always includes
> a meta tag
>
> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;
> charset=ISO-8859-1">
>
> in the header.[/color]

Only by default. You can edit in the HTML mode (click on <HTML Source> to
switch to that mode). In a sufficiently new Composer, you can also change
the encoding by saving the document via "Save As Charset" in the "File"
menu.

Moreover, you might be able - depending on what you can do on the server
- to make the server send an actual Content-Type header, overriding the
<meta> hack. This is unwise though, since someone might save the document
locally, using a browser that won't fix the situation. (I'm afraid
browsers are kinda stupid in such issues.)
[color=blue]
> I would like to have it charset=us-ascii instead.[/color]

As others have pointed out, this is most probably a misunderstandin g.
[color=blue]
> I know the View/Character coding menu,[/color]

It's about viewing documents, not about authoring.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

**Pierre Goiffon** · Jul 23 '05, 10:37 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

"Alan J. Flavell" <flavell@ph.gla .ac.uk> a écrit dans le message de
news:Pine.LNX.4 .61.04110415092 00.4664@ppepc56 .ph.gla.ac.uk[color=blue]
> There's a generic RFC that claims that the default for all text/*
> MIME types is us-ascii - I forget the number, it shouldn't be hard to
> find...
>
> There's an HTTP specification (RFC2616) that claims that the default
> for an HTTP transaction is iso-8859-1
>
> And there's an HTML/4.01 specification that claims that there is -no-
> default for HTML.[/color]

Everything is summurize in that document :

XHTML Media Types - Second Edition

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/#text-html

**Ronald Fischer** · Jul 23 '05, 10:39 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

"Alan J. Flavell" <flavell@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX. 4.61.0411041509 200.4664@ppepc5 6.ph.gla.ac.uk> ...[color=blue]
> On Thu, 4 Nov 2004, Lauri Raittila wrote:
>[color=green]
> > in comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, Ronald Fischer wrote:
> >[color=darkred]
> > > in the header. I would like to have it charset=us-ascii instead.
> > > How can I do this?[/color]
> >
> > Why would you want to do that?[/color]
>
> It's an oddball request, indeed, even if it's technically correct.[color=green]
> > US-ASCII is subset of iso-8859-1. So nothing will be missing, even
> > if one uses iso-8859-1[/color]
>
> Yes, but there may then be coded characters present that aren't legal
> in ASCII; presumably (but it would have been better if the questioner
> had been explicit about such details) that is what the questioner was
> trying to avoid.[/color]

Correct: I'm using a German keyboard and would like to avoid that,
by mistake, a German umlaut slips into the generated HTML page (instead
of the HTML equivalent, say, ä). Of course it would be very
convenient that the composer automatically converts an umlaut I'm
typing into the correct HTML equivalent, but this was not my
primary concern.

BTW, I'm using the composer which comes with Netscape 7.

And big thanks for all the helpful comments.

Ronald

**Markus Ernst** · Jul 23 '05, 10:40 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

Ronald Fischer wrote:[color=blue]
>
> Correct: I'm using a German keyboard and would like to avoid that,
> by mistake, a German umlaut slips into the generated HTML page
> (instead
> of the HTML equivalent, say, ä). Of course it would be very
> convenient that the composer automatically converts an umlaut I'm
> typing into the correct HTML equivalent, but this was not my
> primary concern.[/color]

I think you are on the wrong steamer (do they say this in English, too?)...
;-)

The character set indicated in the head of a web page tells the browser how
to interpret non-ascii characters. So as the german umlauts are part of
iso-8859-1, but probably not of us-ascii, changing this setting might result
in the contrary of what you want: If by mistake an "ä" remains in the code,
it will be shown correctly with the iso-8859-1 setting, but incorrectly with
the us-ascii setting. I might get corrected if I am wrong here.

If your editor uses the character set meta tag to decide which characters it
encodes as HTML entities, I consider this as a bug of the editor. In this
case I suggest to use another product such as Dreamweaver which encodes all
non-ascii characters by default.

--
Markus

**Dr John Stockton** · Jul 23 '05, 10:40 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

JRS: In article <219750c.041110 0655.758b240b@p osting.google.c om>, dated
Wed, 10 Nov 2004 06:55:48, seen in news:comp.infos ystems.www.authoring.h
tml, Ronald Fischer <ronaldf@eml.cc > posted :[color=blue]
>
>Correct: I'm using a German keyboard and would like to avoid that,
>by mistake, a German umlaut slips into the generated HTML page (instead
>of the HTML equivalent, say, ä). Of course it would be very
>convenient that the composer automatically converts an umlaut I'm
>typing into the correct HTML equivalent, but this was not my
>primary concern.[/color]

If you use a PC, then you can use my simple program EIGHTBIT - get it
via sig line 3 below - to scan a file for characters with the upper bit
set. And you can use my HUNT to make it check many files, date-
selectively :

HUNT *.htm f#-28 "EIGHTBIT" u e

to check all files dated less than 29 days ago.

Reporting is simple, on the basis that those that are found will be
changed.

Of course, a programmable editor like MiniTrue could be scripted to
convert all dubious characters, such as those with umlauts or cedillas,
to sequences such as ü, with if desirable each change being
queried.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon. co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/> - FAQqish topics, acronyms & links.
PAS EXE TXT ZIP via <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/programs/00index.htm>.
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SoRFC1036)

**Ronald Fischer** · Jul 23 '05, 10:40 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

"Markus Ernst" <derernst@NO#SP #AMgmx.ch> wrote in message news:<4192407a$ 0$8431$afc38c87 @news.easynet.c h>...[color=blue]
> Ronald Fischer wrote:
> I think you are on the wrong steamer (do they say this in English, too?)...[/color]

OK, I see I should have made myself more clear of WHY I wanted this in first place.

Assume that my page is encoded by a meta tag complaining iso-8859-1, but the
browser used to view this page has this character set not installed. How does
the browser know how to display the page?

I have experience with a similar problem relating to email: When I send
an email encoded as charset=iso-8859-1, and the receiving mail client
does not know this character set, the whole email might be unreadable,
even if it contains ONLY characters from the us-ascii subset. I've
encountered this problem many times in email correspondance with Japanese
and Chinese. What had happened there is that the Japanese mail clients
was configured to recognize us-ascii and a selection of Japanese
encodings. Since it did not know how to handle iso-8859-1, it assumed
some default. If the default happens to be us-ascii, everything is fine.
If the default is a Japanese character set, the whole email might be
unreadable.

I fear the same for a web page, so I thought that it ideally should be
us-ascii only.

Ronald

**Alan J. Flavell** · Jul 23 '05, 10:40 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, Markus Ernst wrote:
[color=blue]
> If your editor uses the character set meta tag to decide which
> characters it encodes as HTML entities, I consider this as a bug of
> the editor.[/color]

I can't agree. Characters which cannot be encoded in the
currently-declared encoding scheme ("charset" MIME parameter) can be
included in HTML documents by means of &-notation. This is a
technically correct and efficient way of representing text. (It
can cause problems with Netscape 4).
[color=blue]
> In this case I suggest to use another product such as Dreamweaver[/color]

I recommend understanding better the underlying principles and not
/relying/ on any authoring software to take the right decisions. I
mean, certainly use your favourite authoring package, but make user
you understand the result which it's producing.
[color=blue]
> which encodes all non-ascii characters by default.[/color]

It's one possible choice, but by no means the only one. See

404 Not Found

http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/checklist

for some discussions.

**Markus Ernst** · Jul 23 '05, 10:40 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

Alan J. Flavell wrote:[color=blue]
> On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, Markus Ernst wrote:
>[color=green]
>> If your editor uses the character set meta tag to decide which
>> characters it encodes as HTML entities, I consider this as a bug of
>> the editor.[/color]
>
> I can't agree. Characters which cannot be encoded in the
> currently-declared encoding scheme ("charset" MIME parameter) can be
> included in HTML documents by means of &-notation. This is a
> technically correct and efficient way of representing text. (It
> can cause problems with Netscape 4).[/color]

That was what I was actually suggesting with "encodes as HTML entities". My
wording seems to be misunderstandab le as my English is not very good. But
rather than using the choice of the mime parameter (which might be changed
manually later) I would prefer a setting such as:
Use entities for
- All non-ascii characters
- Characters that are not part of declared character set
- Special characters only
- Don't use entities
[color=blue][color=green]
>> In this case I suggest to use another product such as Dreamweaver[/color]
>
> I recommend understanding better the underlying principles and not
> /relying/ on any authoring software to take the right decisions. I
> mean, certainly use your favourite authoring package, but make user
> you understand the result which it's producing.[/color]

Yes you are right. Anyway there is so much to understand in creating web
pages, that I consider it as ok to rely on "how-tos" in the fields where you
are aware that you don't understand everything yet. Many people do not care
at all.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> which encodes all non-ascii characters by default.[/color]
>
> It's one possible choice, but by no means the only one. See
> http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/checklist
> for some discussions.[/color]

Very interesting step towards understanding, thanks!

--
Markus

**Alan J. Flavell** · Jul 23 '05, 10:40 PM

Re: Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004, Markus Ernst wrote:
[color=blue]
> That was what I was actually suggesting with "encodes as HTML
> entities". My wording seems to be misunderstandab le as my English is
> not very good.[/color]

macht nix, das kriegen wir auch so hin... ;-)
[color=blue]
> But rather than using the choice of the mime parameter (which might
> be changed manually later)[/color]

I think I have to stress that the character encoding scheme
("charset") is an important property of any HTML document. You can't
just simply go changing some "meta" and expect the result to make
sense. Changing the "charset" of an (X)HTML document is something
which can be performed "by rote", but you need to co-ordinate it with
appropriate changes to the document itself (converting coded
characters into &-notations where necessary).

For example, authoring packages may be able to read-in an HTML file in
one encoding scheme, and then do "save-As" with a choice of a new
encoding scheme, without changing anything else in the source.
Equally, there are SGML-based (for HTML) and XML-based (for XHTML)
tools which will do exactly this, without changing the meaning of the
document in any other way.

good luck

Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

Netscape Composer: How to set charset for a page?

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