Re: Document encodings

[John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>]

Phil Ruelle scripsit:

> I'm guessing that all the encodings XML supports have a common 
> 'root' so the XML declaration can always be read using the 'base' 
> character set. Is this correct or am I way off the mark?

XML in principle can support any encoding whatever, as long as it's properly
labeled, including the one I made up last February.

In practice, though, you can read the encoding declaration if you
are capable of interpreting ASCII and basic EBCDIC and if you know
enough to skip over 0x00 bytes.  See Appendix F of the XML
Recommendation for details.

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
	--Douglas Hofstadter