HTTP actions method

Method which requires HTTP daemon actions

This method assumes that your browser recognizes
Content-Type: type; charset=name
HTTP header field as described in Internationalization of the Hypertext Markup Language (RFC 2070). Every browser which claims to implement Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1 (RFC 2616) should understand this directive, see corresponding quotes. Of course your browser needs to know about KOI8-R character set itself, too.

The server uses Content-Type HTTP header answer field to inform your browser about document character set. Default HTTP header for HTML files looks like this:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 1997 18:55:52 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3b3
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

For Russian KOI8-R character set HTML documents, it will take the form:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 1997 18:55:52 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3b3
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=koi8-r

instead of default form.

When your browser encounters this HTTP header line, it displays the document using KOI8-R character set (or font).

The same words are true for text files too, in this case server must replace default text files header

...
Content-Type: text/plain

with

...
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=koi8-r

for text files in KOI8-R.

To check if your browser support this method well, set its default encoding to ISO8859-1 or Western and try to load this example, then you'll see a Russian text if this method is supported, or some cryptic text if not supported. This test also checks for the HTTP over META bug.

If you use Apache HTTPD, you can easily tune it to support this specification.