Encoding meta info emebeded in file?

What do you think of the idea of using a double BOM at the beginning
of a file to encode the name of the encoding in ASCII? Perhaps a
special MIME type and extension for these. For Java, the class library
would bypass them so that to the program it would appear they were not
there, and wrote write them transparently. It would give Java the
ability to automatically select the correct encoding.

Problems:

1. no existing files have the markers.

2. everyone is going to UTF anyway. This would just encourage weird
encodings.

3. Other languages would not know what to do with these files.

4. double BOM might occur accidentally in other encodings.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

"People think of security as a noun, something you go buy. In reality, it’s an abstract concept like happiness. Openness is unbelievably helpful to security."
~ James Gosling (born: 1955-05-18 age: 54), inventor of Java.