> Is server software actually obliged to perform such conversions on > request?
No, there is no obligation. Surely, rather, browsers should be expected to support a > certain minimum set of encodings, Ah but how minimum is acceptable? Of course, and I've said this already in this thread, we can now just make sure that every server and ever client supports UTF-8 and UTF-16. However it will be some time before servers can assume all browsers can accept these, and before all browsers can assume that all servers can send them. The rule of http headers over-riding embedded self-desciption is going to be necessary until this has come to pass. Even after then it's going to be necessary as there is only one http header which states encoding, but there is an unlimited number of mechanisms for self-description in an unlimited number of potential document types.
