change default HTML encoding to UTF-8

[Bob Stayton <bobs@sagehill.net>]

We have a bug report suggesting that the default output encoding for the 
DocBook html stylesheet be changed from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8.  Note this 
only applies to the original HTML 4 output from the "html" directory. 
The "xhtml" and "xhtml5" outputs already output UTF.

The original HTML 4 standard said ISO-8859-1 was the default encoding, 
but that UTF-8 would be acceptable.  It isn't difficult for a user to 
change the output to UTF-8, but it does require a customization.  The 
question here is whether to change the default output encoding to UTF-8.

This would change the HTML output to replace character references like 
&#xXXXX; to actual UTF-8 encoded characters, and change the encoding 
information in the header to reflect that.

I'm reluctant to change something that will break the builds that 
DocBook people depend on.  Would this impact you if the change was made?

Bob Stayton




-------- Forwarded Message --------

[bugs:#1400] Default encoding for HTML-based outputs
.
Status: open
Group: output: HTML
Created: Thu Aug 10, 2017 11:41 AM UTC by Radu Coravu
Last Updated: Thu Aug 10, 2017 11:41 AM UTC
Owner: nobody

One of our clients reported that the default output encoding for Docbook 
to HTML is ISO 8859-1 which is not suitable at all for other languages 
with extended char sets like Russian:

https://www.oxygenxml.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14812&p=43711#p43711

Maybe the default language for HTML (and also for HTML chunk) should be 
changed to be UTF-8 as UTF-8 is already used as the default language for 
XHTML.