RE: [xml-dev] Text/xml with omitted charset parameter

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

As much as I disliked it at the time, that is precisely the reason 
Tim Bray presented for the Draconian parse when XML 
was in the process of being spec'd.  It seemed 
counter to common practice at the time, but in the context 
of a large loosely distributed set of tools, it is one 
of the sanest decisions made.   Live and learn. 

We often debate here the freedoms of the developer and the local 
node to choose its options; yet, we must be sensitive 
to the core set of choices we must all agree in order to maintain 
that freedom of other choices. That is, to stay loose,  
those core choices are non-negotiable.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Brennan [mailto:Michael_Brennan@Allegis.com]

So we just need to keep educating people about this, and things will
continue to improve.

I think we also need to learn the lessons from what has happened on the web.
The idea of having forgiving tools sounds great in theory, but it encourages
sloppy practices on the part of developers. It is because of "forgiving"
browsers that we have a web populated with malformed HTML content. We should
try not to repeat that mistake with XML.