Subject: Re: Patch: Multi-encoding Text import/export
From: Vlad Harchev (hvv@hippo.ru)
Date: Sun May 20 2001 - 13:08:28 CDT
On Sun, 20 May 2001, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> Vlad Harchev wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, 20 May 2001, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> >
> > > Sam TH wrote:
> > > > Other than that, this is excellent.
> > >
> > > Thanks! I've found that we must make the Text Encoding a per-
> > > document feature instead of based entirely on the locale.
> > > I need to know how to add an "encoding" field to AbiWord's
> > > document class - this will also be very useful for at least
> > > the HTML and RTF importers and exporters - probably more.
> >
> > I think they are needed. Both RTF and HTML formats pretty precisely specify
> > encoding (RTF - in some backward way) - so it's not necessary. The only use is
> > if someone exported file by (or wants to export for importing into) some
> > widely spread non-following specs app. I don't know ones that satisfy both
> > conditions :)
>
> Sorry Vlad. I don't understand if you're saying adding this is
> a good or a bad idea. I think it's an essential idea so we can
> load an HTML document in Shift-JIS encoding and save it as a plain
> text file in EUC-JP encoding on a machine with an English locale.
>
> Just the kind of thing I use MS Word for now...
Why user might want to save HTMLs in some particular encoding? HTMLs can be
put on the web in any encoding (if it's mentioned in the header) - and any
compliant and reasonable browser will be able to show them regardless of
encoding. The only case is - the user is web developer and needs to have
HTML in some particular encoding (for hand-editing) - but such people should
also have tools for converting texts between various encodings.
So, church secretary shouldn't bother about knowning what encoding is. Just
save in utf8 most of the time (or allow to select text encoding to write
HTML in using abiword preferences file - without any GUI to save
programmer's efforts) (and probably better write generic portable
utility to convert text between arbitrary encodings, that won't relate to
AbiWord project).
But of course I don't mind if somebody coded support for selection of charset
to save HTMLs in in AbiWord. It will just look
Best regards,
-Vlad
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