Re: [9fans] simplicity

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@coraid.com>]

On Wed Oct 10 10:05:45 EDT 2007, stalker@maths.tcd.ie wrote:
> > i think this is a character set conversion problem, not a locale
> > problem.  a small distinction, but i think one can live with converting
> > character sets as they come onto a system.  localized (ha!) complexity.
> 
> I'm not sure your solution is always the correct one, or is implementable.
> Should an MTA silently convert incoming mail to the local character set?

it doesn't have to.  upas/fs does given the character set in the file.
i've thought about the mta doing it.  i think that would be a nice solution.

> I'm not sure I want that.  The other program in my example was a web
> browser reading from a pipe.  It can't know whether it's processing data
> as it comes into the system or data which is already there and has already
> been converted, unless either it can trust the meta tag in the document to
> have been updated or the conversion is pushed out into the network layer.

what is the standard.  if the encoding in the header header is x does that mean
that the encoding in the html header needs to be x?  what happends if they
differ?

the only case that makes sense is that they have to be the same.  but html
and http generally run counter to common sense. ;-)

- erik