Re: output encoding="iso-8859-1"

Yes, all your points are correct.

> My conclusion for now is that the safest way to do manage content with
> international characters is to use the character references

Yes, it's safest in that by only using non-ASCII characters by reference,
your document is at a low level 100% ASCII and thus can be misinterpreted
as being in pretty much any encoding (a few obscure ones notwithstanding).

One of the features of XML, though, is that there are relatively
unambiguous rules for determining the encoding, and for declaring it,
so that this shouldn't be necessary. Of course, your system is only as 
strong as its weakest link, so if you have some unknown factor like 
a web browser's dubious mechanisms for encoding and transmitting the text 
input in an HTML form, you cannot reliably process the data without making 
some dangerous assumptions.

   - Mike
_____________________________________________________________________________
mike j. brown, software engineer at  |  xml/xslt: http://skew.org/xml/
webb.net in denver, colorado, USA    |  personal: http://hyperreal.org/~mike/


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