RE: [xml-dev] Here's how to process XML documents written in German

["Tony Graham" <tgraham@mentea.net>]

On Wed, January 30, 2013 9:54 pm, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> Tony Graham wrote:
>
>> if you can't trust the encoding or normalization
>> form of the XML that you receive, then normalise
>> it as soon as you receive it so all of your XML is
>> consistent
>
> Is that a Best Practice? That is:
>
>     Best Practice: before processing any XML
>     document, apply an identity transformation
>     to it which converts the entire XML document
>     into a Unicode normalized form. For example,
>     each combining character sequence is converted
>     into a precomposed character.

It's not a general Best Practice because, as Michael and Simon attest,
most people don't need it so it would just waste CPU cycles and hasten the
heat death of the universe.  You might see it as a Good For This Situation
Practice if you can't or won't trust what you receive.

It's not clear what you mean by an identity transformation.  Just an XSLT
identity transformation isn't going to do it for you, especially since
your starting point for this thread was that XSLT processors don't
ordinarily do character normalization.

Regards,


Tony Graham                                   tgraham@mentea.net
Consultant                                 http://www.mentea.net
Mentea       13 Kelly's Bay Beach, Skerries, Co. Dublin, Ireland
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