• From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• To: xml-editor@w..., "xml-dev@x..." <xml-dev@x...>, "xml-dev@x..." <xml-dev@x...>
• Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 22:01:20 -0700

At 02:51 PM 5/24/00 -0400, John Cowan wrote:

>Currently the XML Recommendation is silent about the handling of
>documents that contain "impossible" bytes.  For example, the byte 0xFF
>cannot appear in any UTF-8 encoded document.  We are considering making
>such violations of the encoding a fatal error.

Tricky one.  If detected, it should be a fatal error in the draconian
XML style.  
...
>CON: Some parsers may be relying on libraries supplied by the OS, which may
>not properly signal erroneous input.  

Wow... what would they actually do, I wonder?  This seems kind of horrid.
I think it should stay fatal, on the following analogy: if a document
contained "<foo<<<<>" and a broken system I/O library supressed all but
the first "<<<<<", the error would be undetectable.  But the document's
still broken.  I think the analogy is exact. -T.


***************************************************************************
This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers.
To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev
List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
***************************************************************************

• Prev by Date: Re: Possible changes for XML 2nd Edition
• Next by Date: ANN: 4DOM 0.10.0
• Previous by thread: Re: Possible changes for XML 2nd Edition
• Next by thread: RE: Possible changes for XML 2nd Edition
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread