[whatwg] Web Encodings

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Sun, 30 Aug 2009 03:47:34 +0200, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> I've backed off UTS22. I think we need the IANA list updated, though, to
> include the aliases browsers support. I understand you are working on
> this? I would like to remove the table in the HTML5 spec that defines  
> such mappings, once that is done.

Part of the alias table is apparently incorrect. I will be working on  
registering the required aliases though, yes, once some more research is  
complete. This will however not solve at least the following two problems:

  * Some encodings need to be decoded (and encoded) using another encoding.  
(The other table HTML5 contains.)
  * The standards for encodings do not always match the required  
implementation of the encoding. Apparently just like with anything else  
encoding standards do not match reality.

(Initially it also seemed to be a problem to register encodings with an  
"x-" prefix, but I think we're past that now, though of course we can't be  
sure until it actually succeeds.)


>> Another problem HTML5 does not solve is giving a definitive list of
>> encodings clients have to implement to be compatible with a large body
>> of Web content. This means new clients will have to reverse engineer
>> that list from existing clients which I think is bad.
>
> If you can get browser vendors to agree on a comprehensive and accurate
> list, I'm happy to add it to the spec. But unless a plurality of browser
> vendors actually decide to standardise on a single set of encodings, I
> don't know that it makes sense to spec something here.

Once we've documented more details on  
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Web_Encodings we should be able to make some  
basic requirements. Such as requiring the encodings everyone supports. I  
suppose HTML5 might not be the best place for that though. It definitely  
has all the right people involved, but encodings affect more than just  
HTML.	


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
http://annevankesteren.nl/