Asked • 05/30/19

utf-8 / utf-16 conversion?

When I design a html page in Dreamweaver CS6 I use its validation tool (it sends the code to w3c) and I get no errors. However, when I validate the same page in UltraEdit 21 (it uses HTML Tidy) I get the warning: "Specified input encoding (utf-8) does not match actual input encoding (utf-16)" The page is set as html5 (with `<!doctype html>`), as utf-8 (with `<meta charset="utf-8">`) and contains greek text. Well, the question is: 1. Does that problem affect the appearance of the page? I mean, when I publish it, will a user in China, Germany, or ...Tierra del Fuego see the greek text? If yes, the rest are less important, but I'll ask them: 2. What makes HTML Tidy to define the document as utf-16? Is there a character, word or visible string of any kind that I can remove/delete to correct the problem? 3. If I use `<meta charset="utf-16">` will browsers parse the code correctly (ending to greek text for the global user)?

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Anonymous A. answered • 12/21/19

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Hello,


Several things here.


The first one is, why are you validating? Validators are nice and all, but as long as you are responsible with your markup and adhere to guidelines and standards, generally speaking, you don't have to validate your pages. Sometimes those validators become more a hassle than a solution.


Make sure your markup is optimized, clean and well structured.


I personally haven't validated in like forever, and I don't think I will ever validate again. I know what I'm doing and I don't need a validator to tell me (or not if it's acting up, lol) that I'm doing my job well, lol.


The second thing is try using this meta tag instead:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">


To answer your questions specifically.


  1. Yes, it's likely it will affect the rendering of the Greek text, albeit not the "appearance" of the page.
  2. HTML Tidy isn't likely defining your page as UTF-16, that's likely your text editor instead. Either stick with DW or download Sublime Text (I use ST) or Atom or Visual Studio Code.
  3. Tidy HTML merely cleans up and beautifies your markup, that's it, so I wouldn't think it's the offending piece here.

Also, try saving your file as UTF-8.


Check out this post in StackOverflow about a similar issue: can't show greek letters in browser


Hope this helps.


Regards.


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