Character encoding: contradiction with RFC 3023?

All,

I think that the following paragraph of "Section 4.5.7. Media types
for XML" of "Architecture of the World Wide Web, First Edition - W3C
Proposed Recommendation 5 November 2004":

"In general, a representation provider SHOULD NOT specify the
  character encoding for XML data in protocol headers since the data is
  self-describing."

is in direct contradition with section "3.2 Application/xml
Registration" of "RFC 3023 - XML Media Types"
(http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3023.html):

"Although listed as an optional parameter, the use of the charset
  parameter is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED, since this information can be used
  by XML processors to determine authoritatively the charset of the XML
  MIME entity.  The charset parameter can also be used to provide
  protocol-specific operations, such as charset-based content
  negotiation in HTTP."

  [...]

  There are several reasons that the charset parameter is
  authoritative.  First, recent web servers have been improved so that
  users can specify the charset parameter.  Second, [RFC2130] specifies
  that the recommended specification scheme is the "charset" parameter.

  On the other hand, it has been argued that the charset parameter
  should be omitted and the mechanism described in Appendix F of [XML]
  and [XML1.1] (which is non-normative) should be solely relied
  on. [...]"

This is reiterated in a current draft:

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-murata-kohn-lilley-xml-00.txt

It would be good if this contradition could be solved.

-Erik

Received on Thursday, 11 November 2004 21:51:38 UTC