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

2000-03-22 09:52:54
In message "RE: Some text that may be useful for the update of RFC 2376",
Langer, Paul wrote...

But there is an open issue with XML (media type "text/xml") via HTTP:

I think that RFC 2376 covers all issues about the charset.  Your point 
is not an open issue but rather a proposal to revisit past decisions.

There are systems out there now (e.g. IE5, Netscape 4.7) that send
XML documents with correct encoding declaration as media type "text/xml"
without charset parameter.
If the document arrives without a charset parameter in the Content-Type
header at the XML processor's site, the processor does not know whether
there was a transcoder involved or not and has to use encoding "us-ascii"
for this document.

Yes, the charset parameter is often missing or incorrect.  But if we 
change the default, all MIME engines will fail to work.  We cannot sacrifice 
conformant implementations so as to rescue non-conformat implementations.

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

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