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Bug 7778 - "interpreted as a character encoding" is not linked to a defined algorithm
Summary: "interpreted as a character encoding" is not linked to a defined algorithm
Status: CLOSED NEEDSINFO
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: Other other
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: LC
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-09-30 20:00 UTC by contributor
Modified: 2010-10-04 14:55 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description contributor 2009-09-30 20:00:47 UTC
Section: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#documentEncoding

Comment:
"interpreted as a character encoding" is not linked to a defined algorithm

Posted from: 96.10.240.189
Comment 1 Mark Pilgrim 2009-09-30 20:11:24 UTC
Step 4 of one of the inner steps of the "determining the character encoding" algorithm states:

"If the attribute's name is "charset", let charset be the attribute's value, interpreted as a character encoding."

I am trying to implement this algorithm, and I don't understand the phrase "interpreted as a character encoding." Does this require some additional processing beyond returning the discovered value as-is?
Comment 2 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2009-10-18 22:26:34 UTC
The attribute's value is a string. A character encoding is a mapping of byte sequences to Unicode codepoints. So the attribute's value (the character encoding name) has to be interpreted as a character encoding to use it. It doesn't mean anything more than that.

Does that make sense? Is there better (but still accurate) terminology that I can use?
Comment 3 Mark Pilgrim 2009-10-30 19:20:15 UTC
OK. I can't think of better terminology. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.