On Fri, 4 Feb 2005, Henri Sivonen wrote:

>  "Alan J. Flavell" <flavell@p...> wrote:
> 
> > The /conclusions/ are fine, in their way:
> > 
> >     * Use an editor that supports encoding.
> >     * Make sure you know what encoding it uses.
> >     * Use the same encoding attribute in your XML documents.
> 
> That is not a safe conclusion.

I guess that was one of the penalties of responding to a cross-posted
article.

> XML processors are only required to 
> support UTF-8 and UTF-16. Support for any other encoding is an XML 
> processor-specific extra feature.

But that's OK, since any plausible encoding produced by the editor can 
be transformed by rote into utf-8 prior to subsequent XML processing 
(that's the XML relevance).  And pretty much any plausible encoding 
produced by an editor that's meant for WWW use, is going to be 
supported by the available web browsers (that's the c.i.w.a.h 
relevance).

> It follows that using any encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-16 is 
> unsafe.

I take your point, but again: as long as the document is correctly 
labelled, it can be transformed by rote into utf-8, it needs no 
special heuristics, nor does it run risks of being damaged in the 
process.

all the best