RE: Unrecognized encodings (was Re: XML 1.0 Conformance Test Resu lts)

[Rob McDougall <RMcDouga@JetForm.com>]

I think you're misinterpreting the spec.  I believe the relevant passage is:

"XML processors should match character encoding names in a case-insensitive
way and should either interpret an IANA-registered name as the encoding
registered at IANA for that name or treat it as unknown [...]"

If you examine that statement, it says that you should interpret an
IANA-registered name either as the encoding specified by IANA or as unknown.
Reversing this, you *should not* use an IANA-registered name as something
other than the encoding specified by IANA or unknown, e.g. don't use latin1
as something other than ISO_8859-1:1987.

This statement makes no reference to names that are not IANA-registered.
There is nothing in the spec that says (or implies) that all unregistered
names should be treated as unknown.

Regards,
Rob


-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Brown [mailto:mike@skew.org]
Sent: June 11, 2001 4:34 PM
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: Unrecognized encodings (was Re: XML 1.0 Conformance Test
Results)


> But there's no reason why processors shouldn't recognize other common 
> aliases, no reason to create a "must" where the spec doesn't have one.

I see, but given that a fatal error must be produced if the encoding is
unknown, and given that this clause says that the encoding "should" be 
treated as unknown if it is not listed in the IANA charset registry, it
follows that "UTF8" should not be accepted.

If our philosophy is to always err on the side of leniency in what we
accept, then what is the point of this clause at all, since we "should"
ignore it and carry on under the assumption that "UTF8" == "UTF-8"? :)

Even in light of Tim Bray's explanation of the history behind the clause, 
I see it as being unreconcilable. However, I'm perfectly willing to live 
with ignoring it.

   - 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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