Re: B.1 and B.2 results

>>    I hate character set issues, but I have to agree with Gavin that
>> explicitly ignoring the main protocol of the Web is a loser, especially
>> when it has the potential for a nice solution of the problem.
>
>Yes, but from what Aladdin's cave does this information come from when it
>becomes time to transmit the data?  Does the XML document get stored with a
>complete MIME header, is it maintained in some registry, is some extension
>to the filename used, or does the webserver autodetect, or does the
>webserver guess based on its own locale and OS, or what? 

Any of the above, and others possibilities too (fields in a database
etc.) The very fact that you have so many options should make it
obvious that this is meta-data, not data, and does not belong *in* the
document. 

>a per file or per directory basis) but allow an override for documents
>that use some other encoding, in the form of PIs (that keep SGML
>compatibility). Character set should be an website administrator's task,

I have no problem with *allowing* PI's (I personally would never use
them, or write software that did), but I cannot condone *requiring*
them or *promoting* them.

>In other words: SGML markup for storage, Web protocols for
>interchange. 

In that case, why not just use catalogs and FSI's for storage? I
cannot see *why* we need markup to describe meta-data that also
applies to the markup describing the meta-data. This seems to be to be
logically inconsistant.

Received on Friday, 18 October 1996 12:39:32 UTC