Re: XML* vs. eXpat - encoding

Without regard to any concerns for how something does or does not work, well or appropriately, I offer in response to the quoted snippet...

I have always thought it laughable, that character data could ever be considered self-describing of its encoding. With all the various [and possibility any new] encoding schemes, including endian issues, how could any stream of bits in any particular encoding, actually define the encoding of the complete stream of bits? Just as with transporting those bits, what the encoding is, must be negotiated _outside_ of the data itself.

Regards, Chuck

Scott Klement wrote:

<<SNIP>>
XML has its own mechanism for specifying its encoding. There's a tag that reads something like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

A program is supposed to read that tag to determine the encoding --
but the RPG parsers ignore it completely. This is problematic because
some folks (many folks!) get their XML data transferred from Windows,
Unix, etc, and the XML data is sent with a tool like FTP, Windows
Networking, SSH or (most commonly) HTTP. Most of these file transfer
methods have no knowledge of CCSIDs and do not ensure that the CCSID
on the i5 is set to the right encoding. Your customers can't be
expected to make sure the data is encoded a special way! That's one
of the big advantages of XML: The data is self-describing. So to
handle XML properly, you'd have to write a program that reads the
opening <?xml tag and determines the right encoding for you. Seems
cumbersome to me!

<<SNIP>>