must specify "encoding" attribute in DTD. Why?

[Kent Tong]

Hi,

Why is it required to specify the encoding pseudo attribute in a DTD? For example, it is OK to have:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!ELEMENT ...>

But it causes Xerces to report an error of "more pseudo attributes expected" if it is:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!ELEMENT ...>

Where is it mentioned in the W3C XML recommendation? Thanks for any pointer!

 

[Richard Tobin]

Why is it required to specify the encoding pseudo attribute in a DTD?

I'm not sure; maybe it was thought that there was no point to it if it didn't specify the encoding, but it might be useful just for the version number.

Where is it mentioned in the W3C XML recommendation?

Production 77.

-- Richard

 

[Kent Tong]

I'm not sure; maybe it was thought that there was no point to it if it didn't specify the encoding, but it might be useful just for the version number.

Production 77.

Thanks!

 

[Soren Kuula]

Hi,

Why is it required to specify the encoding pseudo attribute in a DTD? For example, it is OK to have:

You should always specify encoding. Otherwise, exchanging information further than between your couple of computers eventually gets somebody's headache. We see all the time here in Denmark that some people still think ASCII covers everyting (it's insufficient for anywhere but America), and, even worse, the implicit assumption that everything is ISO8859-1.

 

[Richard Tobin]

We see all the time here in Denmark that some people still think ASCII covers everyting (it's insufficient for anywhere but America),

That's an exaggeration: ASCII is quite sufficient for most documents in English. On the rare occasions that I might want to put, say, a pound (sterling) symbol in an XML document, I can use a character reference.

-- Richard