Charset

[Tony Cooper]

When I "view source" of webpages, I often see information like
"charset=windows-xxxx". I understand that "charset" is an identifier
to specify font characters, but how does the writer know what charset
to specify?

If the charset is not identified, what is are the possible results
assuming the page is to be viewed only in the US and is a
non-commercial page for casual use?

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

When I "view source" of webpages, I often see information like
"charset=windows-xxxx".

Probably in meta tags. Proprietary authoring software tends to spit out
tags that specify proprietary encodings. However sometimes the tags are
based on conscious decision by the author.

I understand that "charset" is an identifier
to specify font characters,

No, it specifies the character encoding.

but how does the writer know what charset to specify?

Mostly he doesn't. But he should know it from the description and
settings of his authoring software what it produces.

If the charset is not identified, what is are the possible results
assuming the page is to be viewed only in the US and is a
non-commercial page for casual use?

If it contains Ascii characters only, almost all browsers in the US
probably guess that the encoding is windows-1252, which is OK since
Ascii is (in a sense) a subset of windows-1252.

 

[Andreas Prilop]

If the charset is not identified, what is are the possible results

See yourself at
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/multilingual1.htm>
This page has no specified encoding (charset). You may choose any
encoding (charset) in your browser and see what happens.

assuming the page is to be viewed only in the US and is a
non-commercial page for casual use?

I don't understand how this relates to character coding.

 

[Tony Cooper]

See yourself at
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/multilingual1.htm>
This page has no specified encoding (charset). You may choose any
encoding (charset) in your browser and see what happens.


I don't understand how this relates to character coding.

When I write a question, I try to provide enough information about my
application for the answer so I don't send people off on wild goose
chases.

Before I post a question here I try to do some basic research on the
question so I don't ask a question that is easily answered by a Google
search. Googling "define: charset" I come up with:

"short for character set; the set of characters and symbols that a web
page uses. Most operating systems use the same charset, but foreign
countries, especially those with non-Roman alphabets, sometimes do
not."

That doesn't tell me what might happen if I don't include charset in
my document, so I asked the question here. It does tell me that
something might happen if my page is to be read in a foreign country
on a computer that is set up differently. So, I took that out of
consideration by specifying that this is not a factor for me. The
same general principle applies with the non-commercial reference. If
that's a factor, I'll eliminate it in the phrasing of the question.

If you wish to chase wild geese, that's fine. Sometimes a question in
a newsgroup leads to discussion of peripheral topics. But, if you do
so, it won't be because I didn't give you enough information in my
question.