david_lingard

Thanks Nate and Len, I've been away for a day or two. It's getting even more complicated!

I've found why I thought to change to UTF- it *is* in the FAQ and it refers to the change of default with GL CS2; but from what you say, I'll set it all back to ISO - thank you for the clarification, I'm very grateful, if still bemused.

Len, how did you read the headers in your post? Is it likely that it could change on the server without me knowing?

D

lenhewitt

Hi David,


could change on the server without me knowing?<<

There are a variety of Firefox addons that allow you to display the
response header from a server, such as LiveHTTPHeaders, but it is also
one of the dozens of things that the Web Developer addon supplies (which
is what I used).

As to could it change, only if the httpd.conf file (or Apache2.conf for
Apache2) is changed on the server by adding an AddDefaultCharset line or
an AddCharset Line to the <Ifmodule mod_mine.c> of the conf file.

Here is the relevant section with Apache comments:

<IfModule mod_mime.c>
#
# Specify a default charset for all pages sent out. This is
# always a good idea and opens the door for future internationalisation
# of your web site, should you ever want it. Specifying it as
# a default does little harm; as the standard dictates that a page
# is in iso-8859-1 (latin1) unless specified otherwise i.e. you
# are merely stating the obvious. There are also some security
# reasons in browsers, related to javascript and URL parsing
# which encourage you to always set a default char set.
#
#AddDefaultCharset ISO-8859-1

Now, provided there is also an entry of AddCharset UTF-8, if your page
states UTF-8 then the server shouldn't overide that, even if the default
charset is set.

david_lingard

Thanks, Len, for this and all your time as moderator and helper in the forums.

lenhewitt

You're very welcome, David