RE: well-formedness error

["jt" <jt@xxxxxx>]

You asked for it, "kid":

| -----Original Message-----
| [mailto:owner-atom-syntax@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Julian Reschke
| Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 12:26 PM
| To: jt
| Cc: Atom-Syntax

|
| It may appeat to you that way, but consider that may be cause by
| yourself, not me.

I considered that, prior to my posting the above.  Your lack of
consideration of same is found in your hypocracy above.

|
| > This would be an impossible problem to solve, only if you WANT it to be
| > impossible for your own ulterior motivation(s).
|
| I'm not sure what the problem here is. The question was: "what do I do
| if I don't know what encoding it is", and the answer to that is: "there
| is no reliable way to find out in that case". If there is, I (and
| probably many others) would love to learn about how that works.

Then the astute question would be, how to develop a reliable way to find out
in that case.  That you haven't even seen the correct question would lead to
your lack of answers, very directly.


| > There are a couple ways to solve this "impossible" problem, that I have
| > experience in.
| >
| > 1)  As Sam Ruby has blogged, and mebbe posted here, if the user
| IDENTIFIES
| > what encoding scheme they are using in a well-defined AND USED
| manner, then
| > it is AS TRIVIAL as you say above.  What say you about this
| "impossibility",
| > Julian.
|
| I say that you must be very confused.

This was never in doubt.

The question is whether you are MORE-or-LESS confused than I am.  Your reply
indicates.


| If the encoding has been declared,
| it is in no way "unknown", so this case is not relevant for the question
| I was trying to answer.

Never said you were entirely confused, Julian, just that your pompous.  The
problem is having a reliable and IMPLEMENTED method of declaring this, as I
noted above and previously.

| > 2)  You appear to have little practical experience, because there are at
| > least 2 "universal-type" validators IN EXISTENCE, that I'm
| aware of.  How do
| > these two validators CURRENTLY work?  I mean, if this is an "impossible"
| > problem to solve.  (I don't know HOW they work, technically,
| just that they
| > do.  At least I observed THAT much!  And I've done similar in different
| > applications, m'self, so if a lamer like me can, then whaz the
| > impossibility??)
|
| So please do us a favor and describe that reliable way to infer the
| character encoding for an arbitrary stream of octets. I'm all ears. Note
| I'm talking about "reliable" not "statistically".

If you were, in actual fact, "all ears", you would have noted I in actual
fact DID describe a reliable way.  It will not be statistically perfect, but
the current "universal parsers" RIGHT NOW DO infer almost-all feeds.  I
forget, now, who it was from Feedster mebbe, who said they "sniff out" the
encoding of a feed.

Currently, that's a competitive advantage that NewsReaders use to sell
product.  They'll hafta want to develop other competitive advantages, if
they're going to implement a spec that has this codified.  Hopefully they
will.

So I'm all ears as to why your ears are plugged, Julian.

| > 3)  I admit I'm lame:  I don't know what the implications of all these
| > control-characters are, entirely.
| >
| > 4)  Is your user-interface without problems, Julian?  Can you
| read the next
| > line with your eyes, and with a program, both fairly easily??
| >
| > "<whatEVER-tag>Can you read these control characters?  Like:
| <<a less-than
| > *EQ <<>>, <<a greater-than *EQ >>>>, <<an ampersand *EQ
| &&>></whatever-tag>"
| >
| > I would guess, if not, then your UI and/or your program is (to use a
| > archaic-technical term...;-) "hosed".
|
| If you have a specific technical question that you want me to answer,
| please don't speak in miracles.

No miracles needed, just ears.  That you can't hear what I'm saying is
entirely your own lack, Julian, iow.

Best regards backatchya!

J. Toran (in case I've forgotten to supply this metadata in a previous
post...;-)