I was referencing asian languages as one set of examples for encoding. Of course setting the encoding is important (whether html or within a program dealing wit

I was referencing asian languages as one set of examples for encoding. Of course setting the encoding is important (whether html or within a program dealing with strings - I had my share of hard bugs only to realize just that, another story)! Here I was just sharing my encounters of the browser rendering ?? and □□ character marks, because it did not know. The browser had a "Auto Detect" charset mode, so one always had to toggle (and remember to revert back again when viewing another page). For the very reason you have indicated, "should always set", but in those days (and maybe even today), not always set. Again, just a memory sharing.