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Comment from the i18n review of: http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-html-polyglot-20100624/ Comment 3 At http://www.w3.org/International/reviews/1007-polyglot/ Editorial/substantive: E Tracked by: RI Location in reviewed document: 3. Character Encoding [http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-html-polyglot-20100624/#character-encoding] Comment: " Use UTF-8 or UTF-16 with the appropriate BOM. " This could be read "use utf-8 with the appropriate BOM or UTF-16 with the appropriate BOM", but a utf-8 bom (or signature) is not strictly necessary, and some would argue that it may cause problems, and it's use should be discouraged here.
The 27 September editor's draft contains the following changes: Section 3 now reads: ************************** 3. Specifying a Document's Character Encoding Polyglot markup uses either UTF-8 or UTF-16. UTF-8 is preferred. When polyglot markup uses UTF-16, it must include the BOM indicating UTF-16LE or UTF-16BE. Polyglot markup declares character encoding one of two ways: By using the BOM. In the HTTP header of the response [HTTP11], as in the following: Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8 or Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-16 Note that polyglot markup may use either text/html or application/xhtml+xml for the value of the content type. Using <meta charset="*"/> has no effect in XML. Therefore, polyglot markup may use <meta charset="*"/> in combination with BOM, as long the meta element specifies the same character encoding as the BOM. In addition, the meta tag may be used in the absence of a BOM as long as it matches the already specified encoding. Note that the W3C Internationalization (i18n) Group recommends to always include a visible encoding declaration in a document, because it helps developers, testers, or translation production managers to check the encoding of a document visually. ************************** I believe that this satisfies the request in this bug. Thank you for your patience.