Position on issue 194

 Hi all, since I won't be able to attend the following two 
telcons, I'd like to state my position on one of the remaining 
two issues - 194 - encodingStyle attribute on Envelope, Header.
 I believe that the attribute has no meaning on Envelope and 
Header and that using it there is wrong (although I recognize 
it's currently being used in this way).
 I think the spec needs to be changed at least to remove the 
inconsistency between prose and schema.
 There has been a proposal by Henrik [1] to remove the attribute 
altogether and I support this course because encodingStyle is not 
widely employed (it's mentioned in messages and it may be checked 
for, but it's not widely used to do meaningful stuff), it is 
underspecified (What is a data encoding anyway? What can it do to 
the message? What is the meaning of changing encodingStyle in the 
middle of the XML tree? Where does encodingStyle apply?) and at 
least in some implementations (including Systinet's WASP) it 
isn't necessary for proper functioning.
 We have already reduced the attribute from being a list of URIs
to a single URI for some similar reasons (see issues 159 [2] and
166 [3]).
 Best regards,

                   Jacek Kopecky

                   Senior Architect, Systinet (formerly Idoox)
                   http://www.systinet.com/

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2002Apr/0294.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/xmlp-issues.html#x159
[3] http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/xmlp-issues.html#x166

Received on Tuesday, 30 April 2002 10:28:21 UTC