Re: UTF-8 isn't the default for HTML (was: xkcd: LTR)

In my opinion, from HTML5, and not XHTML5, there should also exist a
leading prolog like

<?html version="5.0" encoding="utf-8">

For XHTML5, we will continue using the XML prolog ; but it *may* be
followed by the html prolog, without needing to repeat the optional
encoding pseudo-attribute, which XML parsers will treat as a parsing
instruction:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8">
<?html version="5.0">

The absence of these prologs, will use the default encoding of each parser.
Autosensing of document types wil remain possible and HTML5 will also no
longer be dependant of transport protocols or to the very ugly <meta
http-equiv="Content-type" value="text/html;charset=utf-8"> element which
forces the reparsing.

The pseudo DOCTYPE tentatively introduced in HTML5 which breaks in SGML
parsers and in past HTML parsers, should be eliminated from HTML5 if the
HTML prolog is present (the HTML prolog would be highly prefered, including
with its useful versioning).
Received on Thu Nov 29 2012 - 09:29:52 CST