ietf-xml-mime
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Re: Some text that may be useful for the update of RFC 2376

2000-03-14 08:20:21
In message "Re: Some text that may be useful for the update of RFC 2376",
Chris Lilley wrote...

- XML sent (e.g. mail, http) as text/xml (or equivalent, e.g. 
text/vnd.wap.wml):

as text/"anything" in other words

I think that RFC 2046 covers text/* in general.  RFC 2376 cannot 
change the default of HTTP (i.e., 8859-1).  The IAB allowed 
RFC 2376 to change the default for text/xml only.

  - Charset parameter is strongly recommended

Charset parameter is required if the charset is not UTF-8 or UTF-16

Even when the charset is UTF-8 or UTF-16, the parameter is required.  
Otherwise, we will be inconsitent with RFC 2046.

  - If no charset parameter, default is ASCII. The default of iso-8859-1 in
    HTTP is explicitly overridden in the specification of the charset
    parameter in section 3.1 "Text/xml Registration" of RFC 2376
    (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2376.txt)

The charset (not default, but THE charset) is UTF-16 (if BOM) or UTF-8 (if
no BOM) and the "default" of iso-8859-1 in HTTP and US-ASCII in mail is
explicitly overridden ...

This conflicts with RFC 2046.


- XML sent as application/xml (or equivalent):
  - Charset parameter is strongly recommended, and if present,
    it takes precedence.

Charset parameter is *disallowed*.

I do not agree.  

You might think that we can avoid bad WWW servers by this change.  But 
we cannnot.  We have to handle a collection of XML, XSL, CSS, VBScript, 
JavaScript, etc.  We need a solution that works for every format.  
Otherwise, data will corrupt.

Cheers,


----
MURATA Makoto  muraw3c(_at_)attglobal(_dot_)net