Comment 16 for bug 206884

Sorry to repeat the obvious.

Problem #1

1. As shown in the attached screen shot, http://atilf.atilf.fr/tlf.htm sometimes displays using UTF-8.
2. Obviously, I expected it to display correctly (using ISO 8859-1 default encoding)
3. _when_ it misbehaves is mysterious, but I found one way to reproduce it.
I see no shorter/better way than to repeat what I already wrote :
1) clear the said URL from history [any occurrence of the hostname in address bar dropdown]
2) open a new window or tag [and do the following in there, of course]
3) set View|Character Encoding to UTF-8 (or anything but ISO889-1)
4) type that URL in the address bar and display page
5) you've got the wrong encoding displayed

Problem #2

Which the default (and actual) encodings are seem a very vague definition.
In that case, there's no wonder encoding problems arise.
Historically, I have in mind that it's ISO 8859-1, but :
1. Firefox users should not be allowed to define the default encoding that should be set in a standard.
(all pages should display correctly without a user's hint)
2. It's a design flaw to define the encoding in a HTTP statement instead of in a HTML statement.
(because that vital information is lost when the file is stored on disk or transferred with FTP)

My report couldn't be more complete and precise.

André.