charset of XML (was RE: Localization of XML)

I'm afraid that the very same reference (4.3.3 of XML1.0 spec.) says:

"Parsed entities which are stored in an encoding other 
than UTF-8 or UTF-16 must begin with a text declaration 
containing an encoding declaration:..."
from: http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210

The above has no qualification about HTTP or MIME headers.

So my only error was in omitting that UTF-16
too does not require a declaration. 

The quotation provided by Paul does not contradict what I said, 
nor what the above quotation says. It is has the qualification
"In the absence of information provided by an external
 transport protocol (e.g. HTTP or MIME)" 

It does not say anything about documents that have information  
from an external transport protocol. In particular it does not say
that documents with such information may omit the 
"text declaration containing an encoding declaration" as required by 
the paragraph that I quoted.

Regards,
Nir.

At 09:03 AM 2/9/00 +0100, Langer, Paul wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Nir Dagan [mailto:nir@nirdagan.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 9:03 PM
>Subject: RE: Localization of XML
>
>> [snip]
>> XML requires an processing instruction about the encoding
>> whenever the encoding is not UTF-8.
>> [snip]
>> This is true even if a charset parameter is provided 
>> by an HTTP header.
>
>No.
>
>Please see chapter 4.3.3 of the XML spec:
>"In the absence of information provided by an external
>transport protocol (e.g. HTTP or MIME), it is an error ...
>for an entity which begins with neither a Byte Order Mark
>nor an encoding declaration to use an encoding other than
>UTF-8." (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#charencoding)
>
>All the best,
>Paul
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------
>Paul Langer               E-mail   Paul.Langer@softwareag.com
>Software AG               Tel.     +49-6151-92-1912
>Uhlandstr. 12             Fax      +49-6151-92-1613
>64297 Darmstadt
> 
===================================
Nir Dagan
Assistant Professor of Economics
Brown University 
Providence, RI
USA

http://www.nirdagan.com
mailto:nir@nirdagan.com
tel:+1-401-863-2145

Received on Wednesday, 9 February 2000 12:44:37 UTC