Hi Nick, > Ah ok... so the type must be sent in the headers before the page is > even generated (i.e. by the web server). So how would the presence of > <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; > charset=ISO-8859-1" > /> or the xml prolog affect the process afterwards? > Presumably by then > they are too late to matter?
I believe this is the case. In fact I think this may even cause a warning on the validator (though I haven't tested this). I know that ColdFusion 6.1 Server sends the charset utf-8 in the header by default and if you simply put <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> on the page the W3 validator shows a charset conflict. In this case you need to tell ColdFusion to send the correct (non-default) charset in the header as well. E.g. <cfcontent type="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">. (Consult your server documentation. This is an example only, relating to a W3C validator behaviour, yet bordering on being off topic.) I'm not trying to talk anyone out of using XHTML, I just want them to know the whole story and that there are more issues than it seems on the surface (and this is a very appropriate place for the discussion). My final words on the topic as it seems to irritate people: XHTML is not a new version of HTML. It's an entirely different beast with different appropriate uses and requirements. Otherwise it would be called HTML 5.0. If you are just doing presentational mark-up, then HTML is the more appropriate language to use and the current version is 4.01. XHTML 1.0 Transitional will also cope with this (sent as text/html) as it has been left open enough to be a transition between the languages, but there is no real advantage in using it for presentational mark-up alone. Anything more strict (1.0 Strict, 1.1 or 2.0) needs a lot more work for valid implementation and (at the moment) some minor hacking or code forking to get around browser mime type requirements correctly. P ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *****************************************************
