Question about charset

Which is best?

[Reno]

RE: DrDoc's posting about meta tags (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/2396.htm)

In Homer's message #85, he references htmlhelp.com, where they way that

<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> "is typically used".

In message 23, bill also says that he uses ...charset=ISO-8859-1

However, in message 22, richlowe says that he uses:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
(brotherhood of LAN also mentions this in message 91).

So what is the difference between "ISO-8859-1" and "windows-1252"? And should one be used in preference to the other?

[PsychoTekk]

it defines the charset that is used to view the chars
(yes, it is as easy as it sounds ;)
for example japanese chars are based upon the same codes
as arabic characters, so it is necessary to define which
encode shall be used)
here's a list of countries and charsets:
[w3.org...]

[Reno]

Thanks PsychoTekk... the page you referenced explains it perfectly.

[w3.org...]

[dcheney]

On that page I note the following comment: "Note that UTF-8 can be used for all languages and is the recommended charset on the Internet. Support for it is rapidly increasing."

Any idea how well supported UTF-8 is? Specifically with what version did Opera, Netscape, Mozilla, and IE start supporting it?

[papabaer]

Good question dcheney,

IE4, and NNN4 offer support for UTF-8 - here is a test page I found: Unicode Test Page [ccss.de]

A wealth of information regarding Unicode can be found at the Unicode Home Page: [unicode.org...]

Opera has an interesting section on Unicode support, read section 8 Text and internationalization [opera.com...]

An important point made is that the required fonts must be available on the user's platform...

Here is a good resource regarding Unicode fonts for Windows and Mac platforms: Unicode Fonts [alanwood.net]

[bill]

So what is the difference between "ISO-8859-1" and "windows-1252"? And should one be used in preference to the other?

I had always used the ISO-8859-1 encoding over the windows-1252 simply because I thought ISO-8859-1 was the original. If memory serves me, windows-1252 encoding is a relative latecomer to the party.

[dcheney]

papabaer,
How specific does the unicode font need to be? i.e. will it use a unicode font like the standard partial unicode one's included with Windows and MacOS? Or does it need to be a "real" unicode font that supports basically everything (and is so big it chokes the system ;-) ?

---

After further research it appears the answer is: it'll use whatever it can! :-)

Also it looks like I really need to upgrade to win2k (currently using win98se) to do proper unicode stuff (i.e. cut and paste)

[lorax]

Does windows-1252 cause any problems for non-windows OS computers?