Re: How to specify a Processing Instruction? (better: how to controlencoding on saving)

[ComCity <mikeb@comcity.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Arnold, Curt <Curt.Arnold@hyprotech.com>
To: <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 11:06 AM
Subject: RE: How to specify a Processing Instruction? (better: how to cont
rolencoding on saving)



> The XML declaration is not a Processing Instruction, it only resembles a
Processing Instruction.
>
Microsoft calls it the PI and has a specific method with these words...so I
was just using what they seem to indicate in their documentation.

> It is not a XML document since an XML document requires one and only one
document element.
>
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
> <foo/>
>
> Is an XML document

Well it still won't read it in.  It will only read it in if the encoding
string is not present.  I assume that means its not in ISO-8859-1.  I think
I might be starting to understand it.  If I do, then I think what everyone
is saying is that I cannot start with an XML template, rather, I have to
create the XML document completely over again, with the ISO-8859-1 encoding
standard from the start and then hopefully the UPS text encoding will stay
preserved when the node is added.

> Again encoding is a property of an XML document when written out as a
stream of bytes, it has no meaning while in a DOM tree.  MSXML's unusual use
of a ProcessingInstruction node to represent the XML
> declaration only describes the former state of the document, at one time
it was encoding using whatever.

So, I can't take an existing DOM in whatever originally encoding it was,
even UTF-8, modify it and save it in a differnet encoded byte stream?


> The XML recommendation addressed this by basing XML on Unicode and stating
the only required encodings are UTF-8 and UTF-16.  Use of any other
encodings is allowed but not required, so if you want
> your documents to universally readable, you will encode them in either
UTF-8 or UTF-16.

Unfortunely, UPS requires the XML document be in a specific format with a
certain text element being very specific.  I'm not in control of their
parser or their requirements.