Re: META HTTP-EQUIV and Netscape2.0

From: Barryr Bowsma <SEPP@MENDEL.BITNET>
Subject: Re: META HTTP-EQUIV and Netscape2.0
Date: Sat, 9 Dec 1995 09:29:37 +0000

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On Wed, 6 Dec 1995, Hynek Med wrote:
 
> Is this <META> + encoding tag already in the HTML3 specs? Or is it just
> another "Netscape initiative"?
 
    Here is how I understand it from reading the following documents...
The tag <META HTTP-EQUIV=3D"Content-Type CONTENT=3D"Text/HTML; charset=3DIS=
O-8859-2">
is supposed to appear in the <HEAD> of a document, as it will tell the
server information to be passed along to the client.  See:
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/html3/dochead.html
No reference is made to this tag in the <BODY> of the document.
 
    According to the section:
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/html3/HTMLandMIME.html
the only value that is defined even in the proposed HTML3 spec still
remains ISO-8859-1, which is also assumed to be the default.  But it is
recognized that a much wider range of charsets is needed.
 
    What this seems to mean is that for now, this is Yet Another
<blink>Netscapism</blink> where they are implementing functions not yet
in the spec but that they feel should be there.  However, this is not a
new tag, but simply an extension of the permitted values of one of the
parameters which is well-defined by the standards-track MIME document.
 
 
    Okay, so after reading this (and I am not at all an expert on HTML),
I changed the document which can be found at
http://www.vszbr.cz/~guest/czdocs.html
so that this META tag is found in the header, rather than in the body, as
the above-mentioned dochead.html suggests.
 
    Now, when I use the configuration of Netscape which follows the spec
of assuming documents are Latin-1 unless stated otherwise, this page
displays with the Latin-1 equivalents of the intended Latin-2
characters.  (The other Czech music page, which has this META tag in the
BODY of the document, displays properly, with the pop-up warnings noted
below.)
 
    I am not the administrator of this WWW server, but it could be that
it fails to deliver these HTTP-EQUIV tags as headers in the HTTP dialog.
Perhaps if the server were a HTML3 server (I am assuming it is an HTML2
server, and I am assuming the HTML2 spec does not support META HTTP-EQUIV
although I have not checked this), it might deliver the information to
the client Netscape when the tag appears in the HEAD.
 
 
 
On Thu, 7 Dec 1995, Jan Pazdziora wrote:
 
>  Also, the META
> flag in the home page works, except for:
>
> Netscape: Error
> reentrant call to Interrupt window
>
> Netscape starts to display the page in iso-8859-1, then displays the
> message and switches into Latin-2. Is this a bug or feature? Is this
> a problem with me or with netscape? Has anybody the same problem?
 
    Yes, I see the same pop-up windows.  But not always.  And sometimes I
see a different message, like Newsgroups: %s or something like that.
 
    I'm running two platforms with different versions of Netscape, and
the display often redirected to a third platform.  There have been times
when this error has not popped up, but it seems to pop up most of the
time for me.  But as long as my default charset is different from that
specified by this tag, I first see the document in the default character
set, then it seems to be re-read and re-dsisplayed as intended.
 
    No, it's not a feature.  It could be reported as a bug to Netscape,
because these are beta releases, and if it is really a bug, it might be
fixed in the next beta release.
 
    But as I mention above, technically this META HTTP-EQUIV tag should
appear in the HEAD of the document as information for the server.  With
the server here, that does not work.  Perhaps someone with a more recent
server can see if it will work better.  (Also, the version=3D3.0 could be
included in this HTTP-EQUIV to clearly mark the document as HTML3, as
noted somewhere in the above-mentioned w3.org server.)
 
 
    That is more than I know now; I hope it's helpful.  And should anyone
have success with their server and this tag defining the charset in the
HEAD of a document, I would like to hear about it...
 
 
Thanks,
Barry Bouwsma
MZLU v Brn=EC, =C8R
<barryb@tuke.sk>

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