AddDefaultCharset and Bug 23421

[Nick Kew <ni...@webthing.com>]

Our shipping with AddDefaultCharset preconfigured is causing lots of
pages to be served with a bogus charset, typically where authors
rely on <meta http-equiv ...> and either don't know how to fix it
or lack permission.

Bundling AddDefaultCharsets help users fix this.  But really we need
to do two more things.  One is to update the documentataion - perhaps
a tutorial on the subject.  The other is to turn multiviews on by
default, so authors whose sysops stick with defaults and offer no
privileges can deal with it without having to hardwire
<a href="foo.html.gb2312">my chinese page</a> into their HTML.

Does this make sense?  Or could we simply drop the AddDefaultCharset
from the installation default as suggested by Duerst and others?

-- 
Nick Kew

Re: AddDefaultCharset and Bug 23421

[Nick Kew <ni...@webthing.com>]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, [ISO-8859-15] Andr� Malo wrote:

> * Nick Kew <ni...@webthing.com> wrote:
>
> > Our shipping with AddDefaultCharset preconfigured is causing lots of
> > pages to be served with a bogus charset, typically where authors
> > rely on <meta http-equiv ...> and either don't know how to fix it
> > or lack permission.
>
> *shrug*, removing AddDefaultCharset creates the same kind of problem, just
> other way 'round.

No, because it enables the de-facto <meta http-equiv ...> hack.

> > Bundling AddDefaultCharsets help users fix this.
>
> What does that mean?

It means I mistyped AddCharset.

> > But really we need
> > to do two more things.  One is to update the documentataion - perhaps
> > a tutorial on the subject.
>
> This doesn't solve the problem, you've described above. If it's a lack of
> permission, the tutorial won't help. If it's missing knowledge, the brand new
> tutorial won't even be read (same as documentation before).

If there's a way to deal with this without .htaccess, then no permissions
is less likely to be an issue.  And the more clueful users will find a
tutorial.

> > The other is to turn multiviews on by
> > default, so authors whose sysops stick with defaults and offer no
> > privileges can deal with it without having to hardwire
> > <a href="foo.html.gb2312">my chinese page</a> into their HTML.
>
> The purpose of the shipped default config is not to administer all the
> boxes out there. It's just a goodie that you can see, that your apache is
> running.

In theory ...

> I'm very -1 on turning on MultiViews, since it's very annonying (and
> expensive) if you don't want it (and you have a lazy sysadmin, lack of
> permissions like described above).

OK, fair point.

> Actually I think, it would be way better to shorten the default config to
> something very small, which just shows the indexpage and let the people
> configure their server themselves. And hey, suddenly the bug reports go to the
> admins (where they belong) and not to us.

Sounds to me like wishful thinking there.  We still get expected to
sort out bugs arising in rpm, deb, emerge, etc packages that bear little
or no resemblence to httpd-std.conf.

> > Does this make sense?  Or could we simply drop the AddDefaultCharset
> > from the installation default as suggested by Duerst and others?
>
> Pragmatically, I think, let's just drop it and we're fine :)

Sounds good to me:-)

-- 
Nick Kew

Re: AddDefaultCharset and Bug 23421

[André Malo <nd...@perlig.de>]

* Nick Kew <ni...@webthing.com> wrote:

> Our shipping with AddDefaultCharset preconfigured is causing lots of
> pages to be served with a bogus charset, typically where authors
> rely on <meta http-equiv ...> and either don't know how to fix it
> or lack permission.

*shrug*, removing AddDefaultCharset creates the same kind of problem, just
other way 'round.

> Bundling AddDefaultCharsets help users fix this.

What does that mean?

> But really we need
> to do two more things.  One is to update the documentataion - perhaps
> a tutorial on the subject.

This doesn't solve the problem, you've described above. If it's a lack of
permission, the tutorial won't help. If it's missing knowledge, the brand new
tutorial won't even be read (same as documentation before).

> The other is to turn multiviews on by
> default, so authors whose sysops stick with defaults and offer no
> privileges can deal with it without having to hardwire
> <a href="foo.html.gb2312">my chinese page</a> into their HTML.

The purpose of the shipped default config is not to administer all the
boxes out there. It's just a goodie that you can see, that your apache is
running.

I'm very -1 on turning on MultiViews, since it's very annonying (and
expensive) if you don't want it (and you have a lazy sysadmin, lack of
permissions like described above).

Actually I think, it would be way better to shorten the default config to
something very small, which just shows the indexpage and let the people
configure their server themselves. And hey, suddenly the bug reports go to the
admins (where they belong) and not to us.

> Does this make sense?  Or could we simply drop the AddDefaultCharset
> from the installation default as suggested by Duerst and others?

Pragmatically, I think, let's just drop it and we're fine :)

nd
-- 
Winnetous Erbe: <http://pub.perlig.de/books.html#apache2>