рд?рд╢ре?рд╖ рд╢реБрд?реНрд▓рд╛ "Wah Java !!" wrote:

> The META declaration must be used only when the character encoding 
 > is organized such that ASCII-valued bytes stand for ASCII characters
 > (at least until the META element is parsed). META declarations should
 > appear as early as possible in the HEAD element.

That certainly addresses my paradox issue, but seems to suggest (to me)
that a single document may actually use two (or perhaps more) character
sets, one which obtains up to the point of the META element, and another
thereafter.  If this were not the case, the parenthesis "(at least until
the META element is parsed)" would appear to be redundant.  Is this at
the heart of Ian's ("Hixie"s) example :

	<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-16">

was everything prior to and including this in UTF-8, and everything
thereafter in UTF-16 ?

Philip Taylor