I'm working on this site: http://www.eikweb.com . Sorry, you won't understand much unless you are a Scandinavian, but this is my issue:

I'm using the CC html Editor, and I have applied the code cleaner regularly, which is set to ASCII by default, so even if I start out with UTF-8, I get this line of metatag:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii" />

and all my nicely written Norwegian æøå and ÆØÅ are transformed into &aelig; &oslash; etc. That is fine and well, because the letters come out as they are supposed to.

But then I run the validation of my html against the W3C site, and I get a warning saying:

"The character encoding specified in the HTTP header (iso-8859-1) is different from the value in the <meta> element (us-ascii). I will use the value from the HTTP header (iso-8859-1) for this validation."

Question 1:
Where else than in the metatag about the charset is anything about my encoding specified? In the HTTP header?? Does it mean that I have to use a different doctype declaration?

Since I don't want any warnings hanging over my code, I dutifully go back to the code cleaner, go into the tab 'Document' for EVERY single page of the site and change the encoding, so now I have the charset=iso-8859-1, and the &oslash; and its buddies have gone back to æøå etc. And W3C is happy with it.

Question 2:
I would like some of you to take a look at the text of the site and see if there are any strange looking symbols replacing the æøå ÆØÅ, or if everything looks fine. Especially if you come from a language that uses a very different charset I would be interested in knowing if it looks ok or not.

Question 1: That is the only place where that information is located. After reviewing your code, it seems to be in the correct location.

Sorry can only help with question 1.

Hi Inger,

I clicked through - and actually read(!) - all your pages and everything looked good! I did not find any characters that looked wrong or were replaced by squares or anything like that! (For what it's worth, I am using Chrome 4.0)

When I ran the W3C validator for your index page, it validated perfectly and I did not get the comment that you quoted about "different encodings". Have no idea why. Maybe I misunderstood you explanation/description?
Also, I am not aware of any place other than the <meta> tag for char set definition.

I have also had the same frustration about having to reset the 'default' character set each time I run the code cleaner. I also have to use iso-8859-1, but in my case for Portuguese characters. I hope the next version of the HTML Editor will enable us to specify a desired default Character Encoding that will stay as default for the project, or until we change it. (You tell 'em, Inger! They are much more likely to listen to you than to me! )
I am also a little mystified by the explanations under the 'Document' tab for the code cleaner. Is that all clear to you? Why do I have to specify 'Latin 1' for iso-8859-1? I.e., why not just call it 'iso-8859-1' ? (I just have to gripe about something!)

An aside: I think I understand at least 95% of the content on your pages, but I would not be able to read it out loud; - my pronunciation would be awful! So, when I read something in Norwegian, I always imagine the voice of Liv Ullman reading it, - and it makes it sound so very pleasant!!

Yes, hehe! I was thinking of writing ... unless your name is Per...


That is because I actually entered the desired (by W3C) charset after I had got the warning.


Well, don't know about that, but I have told them, more than once. You could join in - the more the merrier!


You would be disappointed then, if I read it out loud... BTW your English is suspiciously good, so you must have been using it widely for quite some time. But you are originally Swedish, aren't you?

Well, I have to go on completing that site...

Yes!
Born in Sweden, went to school and to college there. And then: England (briefly), California (20 years, incl. 2 years 'side trip' to France...), South Africa (5 years), Mozambique (10 years, and counting...),...
Adding it all up now, I suddenly realize that I must be ancient!

Unless I have misunderstood my Swedish/English friends, the HTML editor does allow you to change the char type in code cleaner under "document" tab.

Yes, it does, but after each run of the code cleaner it goes back to default. You can't save any other setting.

This is correct, I just manually change on every code clean.

I am sure I would not! Norwegian has always sounded very pleasant to me - when spoken by a female voice! The only other language in the same league, in terms of the sheer music of its sound, would for me be Scottish, preferably from Glasgow, but - again - primarily when spoken by a female voice, of course!

(Sorry about all these unconscionable digressions of mine!)

I have it from the CC top level: They are working on a way to save the character encoding settings! They apparently have had their ears bent over this nagging thing by more people than just me...