On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 11:10:25AM -0500, Mike Miller wrote:
> I was having the same problem on both machines until I added this line in 
> the header:
>
> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
>
> That only fixed it on one Apache web server, not the other.  So why doesn't 
> that fix it for both servers?  I assume it has something to do with the 
> Apache configuration.  Any ideas?

That line is interpreted by the browser, the server doesn't care.

> A friend looked into it and told me "Your broken apache server is sending:
>
>   Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> missouri.edu is sending:
>
>   Content-Type: text/html
>
>
> Look and see if AddDefaultCharset is set somewhere in your config. If not 
> it may be set under an AddType directive."
>
> So I checked and found that AddDefaultCharset is there on the genetsim.org 
> machine in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:
>
>
> # Specify a default charset for all pages sent out. This is
> # always a good idea and opens the door for future internationalisation
> # of your web site, should you ever want it. Specifying it as
> # a default does little harm; as the standard dictates that a page
> # is in iso-8859-1 (latin1) unless specified otherwise i.e. you
> # are merely stating the obvious. There are also some security
> # reasons in browsers, related to javascript and URL parsing
> # which encourage you to always set a default char set.
> #
> AddDefaultCharset ISO-8859-1
>
>
> But it is commented out on mlug in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf:
>
> #AddDefaultCharset ISO-8859-1
>
>
> It seems strange that Apache's comment text tells us that this is "always a 
> good idea" that "does little harm" and it improves security.  It says that 
> a page is "in iso-8859-1 (latin1) unless specified otherwise," but that 
> seems to imply that I can specify otherwise.  Of course, that is exactly 
> what I thought I was doing with this line in the header:
>
> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
>
> Do you know why I'm not able to override the default here?

You need to override in in a .htaccess file, not in the file that
you actually send out.

Cheers,
florin

-- 
Bruce Schneier expects the Spanish Inquisition.
      http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/fact/163
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20100423/bb090651/attachment.pgp