# Character set for the HTML documentation

3 messages from 2007-07-17 to 2007-07-18. Participants: H. Peter Anvin, Junio C Hamano, Geoff Richards.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/9085

## H. Peter Anvin, 2007-07-17 23:31

Subject: Character set for the HTML documentation
Message-ID: <469D516B.6030806@zytor.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/469D516B.6030806%40zytor.com

```
I just got the following email:

> The Git documentation at
> <http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user-manual.html> is
> encoded in ISO 8859-1, but it is being served with a content-type header
> of "text/plain; charset=UTF-8".
> 
> The content-type header overrides the value declared in the <meta> tag
> of the HTML document, so this causes browsers to render the
> documentation incorrectly.
> 
> Apologies if this is a well known issue and you get a lot of mail like
> this BTW, just don't LART me too hard. ;)

The fact that browsers behave this way is of course a bug, but it's a
common one.  Can we switch the documentation over to UTF-8, this is 2007
after all...?

	-hpa

```

## Junio C Hamano, 2007-07-18 02:02

Subject: Re: Character set for the HTML documentation
Message-ID: <7vd4yqa2qg.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/7vd4yqa2qg.fsf%40assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net
In-Reply-To: <469D516B.6030806@zytor.com>

```
"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> writes:

> Can we switch the documentation over to UTF-8, this is 2007
> after all...?

By all means, yes.

I do not think we particularly wanted to use 8859-1, but nothing
in Documentation/ tells the asciidoc toolchain that the document
should come out in UTF-8 either.

```

## Geoff Richards, 2007-07-18 05:26

Subject: Re: Character set for the HTML documentation
Message-ID: <20070718052615.GA4441@ungwe.org>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20070718052615.GA4441%40ungwe.org
In-Reply-To: <469D516B.6030806@zytor.com>

```
On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 04:31:55PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> I just got the following email:
> 
> > The Git documentation at
> > <http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user-manual.html> is
> > encoded in ISO 8859-1, but it is being served with a content-type header
> > of "text/plain; charset=UTF-8".
> > 
> > The content-type header overrides the value declared in the <meta> tag
> > of the HTML document, so this causes browsers to render the
> > documentation incorrectly.
> > 
> > Apologies if this is a well known issue and you get a lot of mail like
> > this BTW, just don't LART me too hard. ;)
> 
> The fact that browsers behave this way is of course a bug, but it's a
> common one.  Can we switch the documentation over to UTF-8, this is 2007
> after all...?

Unfortunately, it's not a bug.  The correct thing for a browser to do is
give the 'Content-Type' HTTP header priority over the <meta> element.
It's defined in an RFC somewhere.

Best thing to do is tell Apache (or whatever) not to send the HTTP
header ("AddDefaultCharset off"), and make sure all the HTML has a
correct <meta> element specifying the encoding.

And yes, putting everything in UTF-8 unless you've got a specific reason
not to is probably going to make life simpler as well.

HTH,
   geoff

```