204806 - pages with an invalid charset should result in notification to the user

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Core :: Internationalization, enhancement)

Description

[Michael Newton]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030504 Mozilla Firebird/0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030504 Mozilla Firebird/0.6

If a page specifies an invalid charset (the URI above specifies "x-euc") the
browser defaults to intl.charset.default.  This is good behaviour for a site
where *no* charset is specified.  But I think if an *invalid* charset is
specified, the user should be given the opportunity to choose another charset,
based on the invalid name.  i.e. the example page could suggest euc-jp because
it's the most similar name.
Maybe a status bar icon would be good for this?  I wouldn't suggest a dialog
box, that would be too intrusive.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Yuying Long]

If you turn on the auto-detector, go to View | Character Coding | Auto-detect,
select Universal or Japanese, you will get the page display properly.

Also you can manually select your own charset by go to View | Character Coding |
More | East Asian | Japanese (EUC-JP) to get the page display correctly.

Comment 2

[Michael Newton]

I've enabled the "Univeral" auto-detect on my profile for the last few days, and
have been having a few problems with it.  for example, looking at bug 195280, I
get it using what looks like one of the Asian fonts, and it reports an encoding
of "gb18030" in page info.  But other pages (like this one) at b.m.o show up fine!

Comment 3

[Yuying Long]

Please clear the Cache (Edit | Preferences | Advanced ), re-launch the browser,
then should be fine.

Basically the problem discribed in this bug we can say it's worksforme. 

Comment 4

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

Works for me using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7a)
Gecko/20040207

Marking WFM.
Reporter, please reopen if you still see this in a current build. Thank you.

Comment 5

[Jungshik Shin]

What do you mean by 'work for me'? This bug (as originally filed) was an
enhancment request. If Mozilla doesn't understand MIME charset specified, the
reporter thinks that there should be an indication of sort. If this has to be
resolved, it has to be resolved as 'WONTFIX'. Otherwise, it should be left open.

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Michael Newton:  

Re: comment 5, do you wish to keep open this request for notification of an 
invalid charset?  If not, please close this bug by marking it   Resolved|WontFix

In my opinion, such an option is unnecessary and would even be annoying; far 
better to get autodetection working as well as possible (and there are multiple 
bugs about that feature).

Re: your comment 2: that particular symptom is bug 181344.

Comment 7

[Michael Newton]

I agree that auto-detection should be as good as possible, but thought a warning
icon might be useful so you know when the auto-detect code has made a guess, and
might have guessed incorrectly.
However, if the developers are disinclined to fix this, I will mark it WONTFIX
shortly.

Comment 8

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
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