Re: Z39.50 character encoding

• From: Alan Kent <ajk@mds.rmit.edu.au>
• Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 11:35:12 +1100
• To: www-zig@w3.org
• Message-ID: <20020301113512.F12806@io.mds.rmit.edu.au>

On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 09:13:20AM -0500, Johan Zeeman wrote:
> DC by itself is not a record syntax; it is a list of data elements.  To be a
> record syntax, the data elements need to be encoded using some scheme.  The
> one I know about is XML.  And XML explicitly uses UTF-8.
> 
> j.

Just to clarify, do you mean the XML record syntax in Z39.50 explicitly
uses UTF-8? XML itself certainly *does not* explicitly use UTF-8.
That is simply what is common. People do use other encodings with
XML (UTF-16 for example is completely valid and in usage - for
example when using Chinese or other scripts, UTF-16 encoded files
are much smaller than the same UTF-8 encoded files).

I was just curious (without re-reading the XML record syntax) whether
it was a Z39.50 decree that the XML record syntax mandates UTF-8 encoding.

Thanks,
Alan

Received on Thursday, 28 February 2002 19:35:47 UTC