[whatwg] Default encoding to UTF-8?

[Brett Zamir]

On 12/1/2011 2:00 PM, L. David Baron wrote:
> On Thursday 2011-12-01 14:37 +0900, Mark Callow wrote:
>> On 01/12/2011 11:29, L. David Baron wrote:
>>> The default varies by localization (and within that potentially by
>>> platform), and unfortunately that variation does matter.
>> In my experience this is what causes most of the breakage. It leads
>> people to create pages that do not specify the charset encoding. The
>> page works fine in the creator's locale but shows mojibake (garbage
>> characters) for anyone in a different locale.
>>
>> If the default was ASCII everywhere then all authors would see mojibake,
>> unless it really was an ASCII-only page, which would force them to set
>> the charset encoding correctly.
> Sure, if the default were consistent everywhere we'd be fine.  If we
> have a choice in what that default is, UTF-8 is probably a good
> choice unless there's some advantage to another one.  But nobody's
> figured out how to get from here to there.
How about a "Compatibility Mode" for the older non-UTF-8 character set 
approach, specific to page?  I wholeheartedly agree that something 
should be done here, preventing yet more content from piling up in 
outdated ways without any consequences. (Same with email clients too, I 
would hope as well.)

Brett