Activity log for bug #206884

Date Who What changed Old value New value Message
2008-03-25 23:53:45 André Pirard bug added bug
2008-03-25 23:53:45 André Pirard bug added attachment 'Screenshot-Le Tr�sor de la Langue Fran�aise Informatis� - Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 3.png' (Screenshot-Le Tr�sor de la Langue Fran�aise Informatis� - Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 3.png)
2008-03-25 23:58:56 André Pirard firefox: status New Confirmed
2008-03-28 01:45:22 André Pirard description I have seen this since long with both Firefox 2.x and 3.0b3. 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. 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.
2008-05-09 12:54:11 Alexander Sack firefox: status Confirmed Incomplete
2008-05-09 17:02:27 André Pirard firefox: status Incomplete Confirmed
2008-05-09 17:58:23 John Vivirito firefox: status Confirmed Incomplete
2008-05-10 00:35:54 Alexander Sack title Firefox uses the wrong display encoding fuzzy/confusing firefox View -> Character encoding menu semantics
2008-05-10 00:38:05 Alexander Sack firefox: importance Undecided Low
2008-05-10 00:38:05 Alexander Sack firefox: status Incomplete Confirmed
2008-05-10 00:38:16 Alexander Sack bug assigned to firefox
2008-05-10 00:38:27 Alexander Sack bug assigned to firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu)
2008-05-10 00:38:38 Alexander Sack firefox-3.0: importance Undecided Low
2008-05-10 00:38:38 Alexander Sack firefox-3.0: status New Confirmed
2008-05-10 19:02:14 John Vivirito marked as duplicate 228988
2008-05-11 13:27:00 André Pirard title fuzzy/confusing firefox View -> Character encoding menu semantics Firefox can display a page with the wrong encoding
2008-05-11 21:16:31 Alexander Sack removed duplicate marker 228988
2008-05-11 21:16:45 Alexander Sack title Firefox can display a page with the wrong encoding fuzzy/confusing firefox View -> Character encoding menu semantics
2008-11-24 01:16:31 Alexander Sack firefox: status New Unknown
2008-11-24 01:16:31 Alexander Sack firefox: importance Undecided Unknown
2008-11-24 01:16:31 Alexander Sack firefox: statusexplanation
2008-11-24 01:16:42 Alexander Sack firefox-3.0: status Confirmed Triaged
2008-11-24 01:17:07 Alexander Sack firefox: status Confirmed Won't Fix
2008-11-24 01:17:07 Alexander Sack firefox: statusexplanation i can confirm that the semantic of the character encoding menu could be improved. However, unless someone comes up with a good idea, i doubt that this will be fixable for 3.0. ffox 2 reaches EOL ... so no fix will go there for sure.
2008-11-24 01:32:01 Bug Watch Updater firefox: status Unknown Confirmed
2009-02-12 17:54:53 André Pirard description 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. Please note that I am not the reporter of this bug any longer. Alexander Sack is. He changed the title to his own understanding. I personnally understand View -> Character encoding perfectly. What I say is that FF does not always display ISO8859-1 by default. André. 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.
2010-09-18 07:35:34 Bug Watch Updater firefox: importance Unknown Low
2010-10-31 11:58:51 papukaija bug added subscriber papukaija
2012-10-28 13:06:52 papukaija affects firefox (Ubuntu) obsolete-junk
2012-10-28 13:09:04 papukaija affects firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu) firefox (Ubuntu)
2014-01-21 09:32:48 Bug Watch Updater firefox: status Confirmed Fix Released