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Hi, In fact, XML's default character set is UTF-8. However if you don't have the character set available you can set the encoding to ASCII, or IS0-8859-1 which is what NoteTab Pro is doing. I believe that Notetab Pro (at least older versions) does not handle Unicode - so it can not output in Unicode but rather uses latin-1. Perhaps another editor that is fully Unicode compliant is in order. There are tons of them now that *are* unicode compliant. If you are entering the data into your ACCESS database in UTF-8 but you are using no characters other than those found in ascii and latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) then the data that your are producing requires no transformation (the ASCII and Latin1 characters set are a subset of the first 256 characters in UTF-8) and the techies can output the data in an XML file that uses UTF-8. Because you are using no other characters then you should be able to edit in an editor that can handle latin-1. (Although it the file is formatted absolutely correctly it might have a header at the beginning of the file that indicates that it is a unicode file and your editor might choke on it) However, a problem will occur if you are using characters other than those available in ASCII and latin-1 and you want to use an editor that is not fully unicode compliant. Your techies can output UTF-8 but your editor will choke. In sum, it is your tool, not XML, that is the problem. If you don't know what the ISO-8859-1 character set is there is a listing at http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/charset/ Liz Shaw Susan Hamburger wrote: > Our tech people are mapping an Access database to output both EAD and MARC > as XML documents. Currently, the SGML conversion to XML in NoteTabPro that > I use generates this string > > <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> > > The techies want to know if the encoding can be changed from ISO-8859-1 to > UTF-8 to support Unicode. My notes from the Publishing EAD Finding Aids > course indicate that XMetaL (which I use to create my SGML documents) > stores the document as UTF-8 and it needs to be changed to ISO-8859-1. Is > this only for the ASCII editor or does XML not support Unicode? My final > output HTML document has it converted back to UTF-8. Must ISO-8859-1 be in > the XML document so it can be converted to HTML and PDF? Or is there some > other reason why the encoding is in ISO and not Unicode? > > Thanks for any help and advice. > > Sue > > > Susan Hamburger, Ph.D. > Manuscripts Cataloging Librarian > Cataloging Services > 126 Paterno Library > The Pennsylvania State University > University Park, PA 16802 > > 814/865-1755 > FAX 814/863-7293