[whatwg] Default encoding to UTF-8?

[Leif Halvard Silli]

There is now a bug, and the editor says the outcome depends on "a 
browser vendor to ship it": 
https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=15076

Jukka K. Korpela Tue Dec 6 00:39:45 PST 2011

> what is this proposed change to defaults supposed to achieve. […]

I'd say the same as in XML: UTF-8 as a reliable, common default.

> (Basic character encoding issues are of course 
> not that complex to you and me or most people around here; but most 
> authors are more or less confused with them, and I don't think we should 
> add to the confusion.) [...]

That's an authoring issue. I bet the authoring gains would outweigh the 
authoring pains.

> If the purpose is UTF-8 evangelism, then it would be just the kind
> of evangelism that produces angry people, not converts.

Evangelism is already in place. The purpose is change of UA behaviour.

> If there's something that should be added to or modified in the 
> algorithm for determining character encoding, the I'd say it's error 
> processing. I mean user agent behavior when it detects, [...]

There is already an (optional) detection step in the algorithm - but UA 
treat that step differently, it seems.

NARUSE, Yui Tue Dec 6 05:59:27 PST 2011
> (2011/12/06 17:39), Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>> 2011-12-06 6:54, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:

> I found it: http://rink77.web.fc2.com/html/metatagu.html
> It uses HTML5 doctype and not declare encoding and its encoding is 
> Shift_JIS,the default encoding of Japanese locale.

Let's hope it is a single incident and not a cult, yet ...
-- 
Leif H Silli