[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

XML encoding labels and RFC2376 (was Re: IE5.0 does not conform to RFC23

• From: Chris Lilley <chris@w...>
• To: Rick Jelliffe <ricko@a...>
• Date: Tue, 06 Apr 1999 18:14:26 +0200

Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> 
> From: Chris Lilley <chris@w...>
> >In other words, automatic detection based on unlabelled content.
> >I believe that this is a bad thing, because there is always the
> >possibility (quite high) of getting it wrong.
> >
> >The encoding declaration, on the other hand, is not autodetection in
> >that sense, it is a label. A very small amount of autodetection has to
> >be done in order to be sure that the label has been read, that is all
> >(ie, is this UTF-16 or is this an encoding where ASCII is represented
> as ASCII).
> 
> In academic material, this is called "codeset announcement" 

Yes, and it is also called a "designating sequence" in ISO-2022 but hey,
I didn't want to go there.

> The term "autodection" does give people the idea
> that guessing is involved. 

Yes. That was the sense in which I was using it. I agree that this is a
bad concept to promote.

> This is important, because if developers think that autodetection
> means guessing rather than codeset announcement, they may be tempted to
> guess encodings  without alerting users that something seems strange: 

Right, and this would be real bad.

In contrast, the XML encoding declaration is a real declaration, just
like <!ELEMENT is a real declaration,  and not a licence to turn on
heuristic bodje-up mode.

--
Chris



xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i...
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)

• References:
  • Re: IE5.0 does not conform to RFC2376
    • From: "Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@a...>

• Prev by Date: Re: IE5.0 does not conform to RFC2376
• Next by Date: Re: multiple encoding specs (Re: IE5.0 does not conform to RFC2376)
• Previous by thread: Re: IE5.0 does not conform to RFC2376
• Next by thread: Re: IE5.0 does not conform to RFC2376
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread