Talk:Character encodings in HTML

External Link Suggestion
Would it be a good idea to add an HTML character typer/generator (such as http://multiz.com/characters.php) to the external links section? This could be helpful to users unfamiliar with HTML. I thought I'd run it by everyone before posting it. Mjas 18:16, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I began using Multiz.com's special character generator about a year and a half ago. It is the best and easiest Greek character typer I have found. As one who conducts a lot of research, and often needs special characters, I believe I can recommend this. Finding this type of Greek character typer though searches like Google is near impossible--after a lot of fruitless searches, I can confirm this. Anyway, this is a good link for Wikipedia to have. HistoryThD 15:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I believe there is one already: It's been there for over a year when I posted it.
 * An Interactive HTML Entities Tool

Previous Discussion
Is the character encoded by an HTML number the same character that is encoded by Unicode by the same number? For example, is character number 2343 in HTML the same as 2343 in Unicode? --Abdull 14:28, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
 * this was also posted at Talk:Unicode and HTML where it has been replied to, please post any further replies there. Plugwash 17:49, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

This page states that a numeric entity reference *always* refers to a unicode character code point. The w3c (http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/charset.html) states that a numeric entity reference is a code point in the document's character set. This appears to be a contradiction and this page appears to be wrong. If this page is in fact correct, then this page may want to explain why the document's character set is Unicode. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.141.135.56 (talk • contribs) 23:08 UTC, 8 January 2007


 * In HTML, the document character set is always the Universal Character Set: "HTML uses ... the Universal Character Set (UCS), defined in [ISO10646]. ... The character set defined in [ISO10646] is character-by-character equivalent to Unicode ([UNICODE]).". However, many different encodings of the UCS can be used: UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO-8859-1, US-ASCII, SHIFT_JIS, and so on. Numeric character references always refer to the document character set, i.e., the UCS. The distinction between character set and character encoding is a bit tricky, so you're right, it could be explained better in the article. Indefatigable 21:39, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

“W3C vs HTTP” referenced info was stealthy removed
Let us discuss an edit of user Ms2ger. Because he forged the m label (for which I put him a formal warning), this controversial edit attracted no attention. But a crucially important reference to the W3C, which prove its disappointment in HTTP/1.1 charset detection, was removed without any compensation. Should we restore that piece of text, or let us write all article from scratch for the third time? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:37, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
 * No response in reasonable time – an edit partially reverted, I restored all voluntary removed information. Please, do not remove unless discussed here (for each paragraph in question), or use fact tag for statements which appear poorly referenced. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:12, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

HTML decimal(sic) character rendering
The "article" is a crappy backwater almost without inbound links. Its quality is better indicated by an evident misnomer in the title: there is no such term as decimal character reference, but there are numeric character references, and the essential word "reference" also was omitted. If nobody corrected this for 7 years, then it is apparently not needed to anyone. Let us merge the content which is not already here, and forget. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:33, 17 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Merge to Numeric character reference, a near-duplicate of the topic, but this has almost nothing to do with character encodings and that would be an inappropriate merge target. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:41, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It is also a possibility. But I disagree that it "has almost nothing to do with character encodings" indeed – it discuss namely specific codes and their interpretation in HTML. BTW I presently noticed that this article is named "Character encodings in HTML", although "Character encoding in HTML" (singular) IMHO would be more appropriate. Not "different code pages and other types of plain text encoding applied to HTML", as the current title suggests, but "encoding of characters in HTML", in the broad sense. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:44, 17 September 2012 (UTC)


 * The use of character and entity references achieves the same thing as encoding, the transmission of Unicode characters, but it does so in quite a different way. The purpose of the character references is to identify the Unicode characters whilst still in a restricted encoding, such as plain ASCII.
 * If we were to merge the lot to "Encoding of characters in HTML" (which is already the scope Character encodings in HTML is using), then the risk is that is confuses these two quite distinct approaches, also that it nears WP:HOWTO.Andy Dingley (talk) 11:42, 18 September 2012 (UTC)