- From: MURATA Makoto <murata@apsdc.ksp.fujixerox.co.jp>
- Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 16:03:05 +0900
- To: ietf-charsets@iana.org
The XML Syntax WG of the W3C has considered the question of the registration of MIME charset tags for the UTF-16 encoding and its impacts on XML. Our position is as follows: 1) Registration of tag(s) for UTF-16 is very important for XML. It should occur as soon as possible. 2) The XML 1.0 spec requires a Byte Order Mark (BOM) on all entities encoded in UTF-16, regardless of the tag that may be used to label those entities. 3) Consequently, if one or more tags are defined such that BOMs are forbidden, these tags will not be applicable to XML entities. The XML-syntax WG does not consider that to be a major problem, as long as at least one tag is available to denote UTF-16 encoding and allowing the BOM that XML needs. 4) The latest Internet Draft for UTF-16 states that the BOM must not be touched during MIME-related operations. That is, the BOM is part of the MIME body. Since XML can legally impose any constraints on XML MIME bodies (e.g. tags must begin with '<'), we believe that there are no layer violations even if XML mandates the BOM. Regards, Francois Yergeau and MURATA Makoto on behalf of the W3C XML Syntax WG
Received on Thursday, 18 February 1999 02:05:20 UTC