- From: C M Sperberg-McQueen <cmsmcq@uic.edu>
- Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 12:34:32 -0600
- To: mhennes@ford.com
- CC: xml-editor@w3.org, cmsmcq@uic.edu
>Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 10:03:46 -0500 >From: Mark Hennes <mhennes@ford.com> > >According to the specification > >document ::= prolog element Misc* >prolog ::= XMLDecl? Misc* (doctypedecl Misc*)? >XMLDecl ::= '<?xml' VersionInfo EncodingDecl? SDDecl? S? '?>' > >a document with an "XMLDecl" could not contain leading white space. >I assume this is not an intentional constraint. Actually, it is. Requiring "<?" to be the first characters of a document makes it feasible to attempt autodetection of the character encoding, at least in the real world (in which virtually all documents are encoded in character sets which are either compatible with ISO 646 or with EBCDIC). Allowing white space before the encoding information would complicate the character-set autodetection; for that reason, we do not allow it. best regards, -C. M. Sperberg-McQueen Senior Research Programmer, University of Illinois at Chicago Editor, ACH/ACL/ALLC Text Encoding Initiative Co-coordinator, Model Editions Partnership cmsmcq@uic.edu, tei@uic.edu
Received on Wednesday, 18 March 1998 13:35:36 UTC