[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: UTF-8 BOM
- From: Rob Lugt <roblugt@elcel.com>
- To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org, Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>
- Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 09:45:58 +0100
Tim Bray wrote:
>
> Actually, I think that the UTF-8 BOM is a deeply stupid idea that
> serves no useful purpose in any imaginable universe. We wouldn't
> be thinking about were it not for the fact that MS Notepad happens
> to write one for UTF-8 documents.
I agree that a UTF-8 BOM certainly doesn't serve the purpose of establishing
"Byte Order" - which one would imagine was the purpose of a Byte Order Mark.
However, I can see that it serves a useful purpose in indicating to software
whether a text file is encoded in UTF-8 or some other 8-bit encoding such as
ISO-8859-1. Of course this is redundant for xml files, but it is useful for
general-purpose software. So, perhaps there is another Universe after all?
Regards
~Rob