Re: [DR609] XP and character encodings

On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, Martin Gudgin wrote:

> I'm not at all sure why we are working at the character encoding level. Most
> other W3C XML specs since XML-Namespaces have been defined in terms of the
> Infoset, not the character encoding. I find it worrying that there is no
> mention whatsoever of the Infoset in our requirements doc.
> 
> I realise that in the 6xx cluster we are talking about protocol bindings but
> I don't see any real need to specify a character-encoding. At the end of the
> day people will send XML that conforms to the XP spec. Whether that XML is
> encoded in UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO-10646, ISO-8859-x or some binary form
> shouldn't matter. Either the other end will be able to decode it or it
> won't. If it can't people will either stop calling that end point ( in which
> case maybe the implementer will support more encodings ) or the sender will
> try a different encoding.
> 
> Maybe people will mainly use UTF-8, maybe people will use UTF-16, maybe they
> will use a binary XML encoding we don't even have yet. I don't want XP to
> restrict the encoding used. Specifying a 'character set of choice' seems
> pointless. If we don't *mandate* an encoding ( and I don't think we should )
> then let people choose.
> 
> Gudge
> 
> 
 I think that what you are proposing is very simple. However, having a
UTF-8 agress Canonical XML which sets the standard for the simplest XML
grammer. It is important to be consistent with other XML related 
proposals.

- Octav

Received on Thursday, 16 November 2000 00:03:23 UTC