** Description changed:

  I have seen this since long with both Firefox 2.x and 3.0b3.
+ 
+ Rem: Please note that I don't say that Firefox always uses the wrong encoding.
+ Please read my followup to see how to reproduce the problem.
  
  I display, for example, http://atilf.atilf.fr/tlf.htm
  Its header is
  
  <HEAD>
  <TITLE>
  Le Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé
  </TITLE>
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="atilf.css">
  </HEAD>
  
  Hence, its encoding should be ISO8859-1 by default as it has always
  been.
  
  As the uploaded attachment shows Firefox displays it using UTF-8.
  
  In Edit|Preferences|Content|Font & Colors|Default font|Advanced|Character 
Encoding
  there's an option named  "Default character encoding"  documented as follows
        The character encoding selected here will be used to display pages that
        do not specify which encoding to use.
  What's the use of this setting if the default must ALWAYS be ISO8859-1?
  Otherwise said, what would be the definition of a changing default?
  It can only cause people to _produce_ the error I describe.
  Hence, produce confusion.
  I saw people say that the wrong behavior I describe is caused by a wrong 
setting.
  There should obviously be no user setting for a necessary default.
  How could the heck a user know what default to set in his browser before 
being able to read a page if the only place it can be said is in that page he 
could only read by setting the correct default ;-)
  
  And this option was left to ISO8859-1 in my browser, of course.
  
  Search www.w3.org/TR/html401/charset.html for "default" and you will learn 
that a HTML document character code that should obviously be specified within 
the document is designed to be specified in the HTTP header (without saying BTW 
how it is specified when FTP is used) with ISO8859-1 as the default.
  Note that this blunder attributed to HTTP servers accused of not being able 
to detect the character code of files they store or of being misconfigured has 
been circumvented by introducing a META directive able to provide -- from the 
HTML document itself -- HTTP header data and hence the character code.
  But note that this is done without concluding that ISO8859-1 is the default 
code of META too, and hence of the document, without regard to the following 
question.
  Question : how the heck could a HTML "user agent" that ignores the default 
character set work any better than my posting this if you and I didn't know 
that we have to use ASCII?
  Answer : no better than the page display I show in my attachment.
  And finally, note that if the reliability of the expected result of a 
standard lies in this phrase :
  "By combining these mechanisms, an author can greatly improve the chances 
that, when the user retrieves a resource, the user agent will recognize the 
character encoding."
  the conclusion is : "OK, OK, that was only my bad luck again, it's a random 
game, bug dismissed, Firefox within said specs, I have to try again".
  
  Or should we try to see why Firefox didn't display ISO8859-1? I've see
  browsers do that for years.

-- 
Firefox uses the wrong display encoding
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/206884
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