Russell Potter wrote:
> Martin,
> 
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#sec-TextDecl says
>>   "External parsed entities SHOULD each begin with a text declaration."
>> so it says "should" and it says "text declaration", not "XML 
>> declaration". That way it is possible to not have a text declaration 
>> as long as the encoding is UTF-8 or UTF-16 and the version is 1.0 I 
>> think.
> 
> Thanks for that very helpful info ... :-)
> 
> If, however, the entity *didn't* begin with an XML declaration,
> how would a processor figure out whether the encoding was UTF-8
> or UTF-16? Some type of heuristic algorithm?

I'd sniff the first few bytes. If we're talking about a DTD here, then 
pretty much the two non-white-space characters are going to have to be 
an MDO (<!) which means 0x3C 0x21 or 0x00 0x3C 0x00 0x21 (or the other 
way round depending on the BOM).

As a general comment, a typical free-standing DTD file should IMHE *not* 
start with an XML Declaration, despite what the Spec says, as this seems 
to make some parsers gag, although it's been so long since I saw a DTD 
file start with an XML Declaration that perhaps the parser-writers have 
fixed this.

///Peter
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