RE: Encoding of xsl:message output

Because you asked a related question on the Saxon list, I didn't actually
notice that this question was on the xsl-list and expressed more generally.
The general answer is that when the spec says that the destination and
format of xsl:message output are implementation-defined, it means that the
way in which you control these things, if at all, is using mechanisms that
are specific to your product.

Regards,

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
http://twitter.com/michaelhkay 


> > 
> > I understand there are a few things left as >implementation 
> defined< 
> > in XSLT 2.0, at the same time I feel I might have overlooked 
> > something.
> > 
> > Can I somehow influence the encoding used by xsl:message output?
> > 
> 
> By default Saxon sends xsl:message output to a Java 
> OutputStreamWriter over the standard error output; the Java 
> library, as far as I know, will typically use the platform 
> default encoding. There's a note in the code that this has 
> been known to fail on .NET when the default encoding set for 
> the .NET environment is one that the Java runtime doesn't 
> recognize; if it fails, Saxon tries again specifying UTF8 as 
> the encoding.
> 
> I'm not quite sure how IKVM does this mapping; on .NET 
> System.Console.Error is a TextWriter, so we should probably 
> be writing character data to it rather than binary data in an 
> encoding decided by the Java class library.
> Perhaps Saxon needs an abstraction layer here.
> 
> In the meantime, of course, you can of course take full 
> control of the destination of message output, as well as its 
> format, by means of various hooks at the level of the s9api 
> XsltTransformer or the underlying net.sf.saxon.Controller.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Michael Kay
> http://www.saxonica.com/
> http://twitter.com/michaelhkay