[MKDoc-users] http://sds.mkdoc.com/information/free-information-what-is-inclusive-design/

[Paul Arzul]

Chris Croome wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On Wed 17-Jul-2002 at 12:49:30PM +0100, Adam Moran wrote:
> 
>>what's happening on this page with respect to these special characters
>>'“'  ? 
> 
> 
> Internet Explorer doesn't user the HTTP Headers to find out the
> character set of the document, it just takes the first 256k of the file
> and guesses, in this case it guesses ISO Latin, when the document is in
> fact UTF-8.

fyi...

the original problem hails from mis-configured web servers. servers are
often setup and left without a system administrator - so when a new file
format (like, say mp3) comes along - they would often be served out with
an incorrect content type. (so the music you just downloaded got garbled
for no good reason.)

microsoft thought it better to ignore the content type and do it's own
document sniffing[1], except it tends to fail miserably. in our case it's
probably not believing we're serving utf-8 and mis-identifying the
character set.

arguably, (and certainly from a standards or security[2] standpoint), the
original problem would have been better tackled by appealing to system
admins and isps to keep their servers up to date.

- p

[1] 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/networking/moniker/overview/appendix_a.asp
[2] http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2001-36.html