[Bug 228988] Re: Firefox can display a page with the wrong encoding

[André Pirard]

On 2008-05-12 17:25,  Alexander Sack wrote :
> OK, lets give it a try, taking small steps. Maybe that works better.
>
> When I first visit http://atilf.atilf.fr/tlf.htm in firefox 3 I get a
> page the is properly displayed. ffox automatically detected windows
> 1252. Is that the wrong encoding? the accents look fine.
>   
You have reproduced the bug.
No, it's the wrong encoding.
In what I wrote, you can read that the encoding must be ISO 8859-1.
You don't see a display error because CP1252 is very similar to ISO 8859-1.
Why you got a CP1252 error where I never got anything else than a UTF-8 
error is part of the mystery game.
> Reloading that page will remember
> your decision to mark it as UTF-8 before. I don't see whats wrong
> about this.
>   
Theoretically, it's wrong, as displaying a page must not depend on 
anything in the past.
Practically, it's not inconvenient if the person who does that knows 
what (s)he's doing.

But it's certainly wrong when what TB remembers is the consequence of 
the bug you reproduced here above and if the victim understands nothing 
about character sets to put that right, which is highly probable if the 
persons they could ask write that encoding semantics are a fuzzy thing 
and if they write pages to understand each other.
Remember I got that page wrong a long time myself before understanding.

In short, ISO 8859-1 must always be used to display a page that does not 
specify an encoding, the user may temporarily experiment using other 
encodings but if anything he does will permanently affect the display of 
a page, that must be after a strong warning to make sure he understands 
what he's doing and so that memorizing the result of a bug be impossible.

It looks like we made the last two steps, doesn't it?
I sincerely hope we're done.

-- 
Firefox can display a page with the wrong encoding
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/228988
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