Okay, maybe here's another way to approach the question.

If I want to have a MarcXML document encoded in Marc8 -- what should it 
look like?  What should be in the XML decleration? What should be in the 
MARC header embedded in the XML?  Or is it not in fact legal at all?

If I want to have a MarcXML document encoded in UTF8, what should it 
look like? What should be in the XML decleration? What should be in the 
MARC header embedded in the XML?

If I want to have a MarcXML document with a char encoding that is 
_neither_ Marc8 nor UTF8, but something else generally legal for XML -- 
is this legal at all? And if so, what should it look like? What should 
be in the XML decleration? What should be in the MARC header embedded in 
the XML?

On 4/17/2012 1:57 PM, Kyle Banerjee wrote:
>> What's the legal thing  to do? What's actually found 'in the wild' with
>> MarcXML?
>>
> In some cases, invalid XML.
>
> In an ideal world, the encoding should be included in the declaration. But
> I wouldn't trust it.
>
> kyle
>
>