UTF-8 encoding vs ISO 8859-1 encoding

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UTF-8 encoding vs ISO 8859-1 encoding

The iTunes tech specs call for UTF-8 encoding of the XML feed file; a friend of mine uses feed generator software through his blog that uses ISO 8859 encoding. Is there a way to convert the latter to UTF-8 so that iTunes tags may be successfully added?
When I tried editing his XML file, I got error messages when I submitted the file to RSS feed validator sites (such as http://feedvalidator.org/. Any help or knowledge is appreciated because I am not the least bit expert in this coding arena.

IBM X41, Windows XP

Posted on Feb 21, 2006 8:16 AM

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Answer 1

Andy Kim

Level 1

50 points

Feb 22, 2006 3:57 AM in response to scoutwert

You don't need to convert iso 8859-1 (us-ascii) to utf-8 unless you have nonstandard characters. Basically, ascii is a subset of utf-8 and for English it will serve you just fine. You can have iTunes tags in the xml file even if the file itself is encoded in iso 8859-1.

The error you see at feedvalidator.org is most likely a warning.

Hope this helps!

- Andy Kim
Potion Factory
http://www.potionfactory.com

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Answer 2

scoutwert Author

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Feb 22, 2006 7:30 AM in response to Andy Kim

Thank you for the information.
What is odd is that each iTunes tag I added to the ISO 8859 encoded XML file resulted in an error message from two different feed validators. I edited the XML file in a text editor - does that matter?

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Answer 3

Andy Kim

Level 1

50 points

Feb 22, 2006 2:00 PM in response to scoutwert

As far as encodings go, editing the file in a text editor shouldn't matter unless you went out of your way to break things. What does matter is the content of the file.

If you give me your feed url, I can help you out further. If it can't be public, please email it to me.

- Andy Kim
Potion Factory [http://www.potionfactory.com]
Podcast Maker for Mac OS X

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