Re: allow UTF-16 not just UTF-8 (PR#6774)

> From: don@lexmark.com [mailto:don@lexmark.com]

> So let me understand this....
>
> Because people have poorly designed and written XML applications running
on
> 3 GHz Pentium 4s with 512 megabytes of real memory that do not allow the
> control over whether UTF-8 or UTF-16 are emitted, we are expecting to
burden
> $49 printers with code to be able to detect and interpret both.

No Don. It is about interoperability and conforming to standards. XML allows
documents to be encoded in either UTF8 or UTF 16: consumers must accept
both, producers may produce either. An XHTML-Print printer will be just a
consumer of an XML byte-stream at some IP address; we don't want to burden
every program in the world that can produce XML with a switch that says
"this output is going to a poor lowly XHTML Print processor that can't deal
with UTF-16, so please produce UTF-8", especially since UTF 16 is the easy
one to implement, and can only cost a few dozen bytes at best.

If we changed this, XHTML Print would have to go back to last call, and you
can bet your boots that the XML community would rise up against us, as it
has in the past, and I can tell you we don't want to go there, and we would
have a hundred people registering objections.

Conforming to XML requirements comes with the territory of being XHTML. The
XML community will not take lightly to us messing with their standards.

Best wishes,

Steven Pemberton

Received on Wednesday, 15 October 2003 09:22:03 UTC