Re: [xml-dev] xml over http - RFC 3023

[Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>]

Andrew Welch wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> There's a very good article here about the problem of reading feeds
> from all over the world in different encodings:
> 
> http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/07/21/dive.html
> 
> It describes how you (sometimes) have the encoding in the http content
> type but also the encoding in the xml prolog, and the problems of
> choosing which to use.
> 
> It also talks of RFC 3023 which sounds like it was an attempt to sort
> it out.  The article is dated July 2004 and I'm wondering if there's
> any more recent information?  Is there any support in modern parsers -
> for example can I give the parser a URL and it takes care of the rest?

I think many parsers can read from a web resource, but few use the 
encoding information from the content type.

> At the moment it all seems pretty complicated... especially
> considering XML was designed for the web.  The problem of parsing
> feeds from all over the world must have tackled a few times over by
> now?

There's a related HTTPbis issue -- HTTP/1.1 (RFC 2616) defines a default 
encoding for text/* -- in retrospective a bad idea, at least for XML -- 
see <http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/20>.

Of course the simple workaround is not to use a text/* content type (so 
this is one of the many problems you don't have with Atom).

BR, Julian