The httpd.conf provided uses AddDefaultCharset UTF-8, unfortunately this overrides what ever the html document specifies in it's meta which makes it impossible to have documents in different encodings in the same server. For more info have a look at the upstream bug: https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23421
Changing version to '9' as part of upcoming Fedora 9 GA. More information and reason for this action is here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
This is not a bug. AddDefaultCharset just adds default charset to HTTP header. The meta tag in html file is just the information, it is not the instruction. You should set correct HTTP header.
A user can not affect the HTTP header, their html can have an encoding but as it is it's ignored because apache is forcing utf8 upong them.
A user can. If you rename file index.html to index.html.iso8859-2 Apache adds header including corresponding charset (in this case iso-8859-2) instead of default one. When using php, or other languages, there are possibilities to add header. You should do it before any output. Alternatively the user can change default charset in the .htaccess.
I agree with everything Marek has said.
I am not disagreeing with what Marek said but you can not really expect end users to add encoding suffixes or know how to edit a .htaccess file. Users expect to be able to specify an encoding in a html file and not having the server overriding it. Is there a *reason* why we differentiate from upstream and we force an encoding? Anyway I'll leave the bug closed, I can always fix it locally....