RE: draft-hoffman-utf16-01.txt available

[Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>]

> I see good reasons for having the BOM with charset="UTF-16".
> I see no reason for having a BOM with charset="UTF-16BE" or
> charset="UTF-16LE".
> 
> I think if we have all three labels and for each of them more
> or less have "use a BOM or not as you like", we have the same
> mess as before, just with more labels.
> 
> I think there are people who believe in the BOM, and others
> that think it's a bad idea. My guess is that it's very difficult
> to change that. But I think what we can do is to try and make
> clear from the sender to the receiver what the position of the
> sender was. Basically, then, BOM-lovers would use charset="UTF-16",
> and BOM-haters would use charset="UTF-16BE" or charset="UTF-16LE".
> We would have several different things, but we would know which is
> which.

I think this is the only position consistent with having
three different charset registrations: "BOM should not
be sent with UTF-16BE or UTF-16LE, only with UTF-16."

> We wouldn't have to change XML, only to add a clarification to
> say that "UTF-16" in the XML spec means only the case
> charset="UTF-16", and not the others.

Yes.