Re: internet media types and encoding

Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org>

> - request a modification the +XML media type registration to state that
> encoding information MUST NOT be supplied by the server unless it is
> known to be correct and agrees with any internal encoding information
> in the content.

IIRC the extra thing to keep in mind is Japanese dumb transcoding proxies,
which may transcode text/* without rewriting the headers. AFAIK
they are the only thing that may make it desirable to favour any explicit
MIME header charset over the XML encoding PI.   Maybe some
Japanese expert can comment on whether they are still a factor to
be considered. 

If it is true that the Japanese dumb transcoding proxies are the only
thing that actually may supercede the XML header, one approach
might be to make a special case to reflect it, rather than a general
framework.  For example, to say "The charset parameter should 
not be used for */xml unless it a regional character set from
locale with more than one common ASCII-derived encoding
and which have transcoding proxies widely deployed. 
NOTE: at the current time, this means Japanese encodings
in particular shift-JIS and EUCJ."

(I don't know whether there are EBCDIC transcoding proxies 
in use too. I suspect not: the trend seems to be minor character
sets to disappear in favour of Unicode at the source, and
for recipients to be able to parse common character sets.)

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

Received on Tuesday, 8 April 2003 08:14:18 UTC