Unicode encoding isn't what I was referring to--it was the ability to specify <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=EUC-JP"> (copied from

Unicode encoding isn't what I was referring to--it was the ability to specify <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=EUC-JP"> (copied from HTML 4.01 specification, dated December 24, 1999). That might not be the first time it was possible to declare the charset of an HTML document within HTML itself, but I don't see any mention of it in HTML 3.2. Also, it's wrong to say that there's "no harmful effect whatsoever"--the ability to do charset overrides requires code to support it, and that code could force awkward compromises in (say) your HTTP layer. All features have costs, even if they're invisible.