Which character encoding should be used for textual documents such as fulfillmentDocuments ?

[Deb1484]

Hello OSDM team,

The OSDM specification states that the content attribute of Documents and FulfillmentDocuments is a Base64‑encoded string containing the document payload.
As Base64 encodes raw bytes and does not carry any information about character encoding, textual content must be converted to bytes using a specific character set before encoding. However, the OSDM specification does not appear to define or recommend which character encoding should be used for such textual documents.
Could you clarify whether:

a specific character encoding (e.g. UTF‑8) is implicitly expected for textual document content, or
the choice of character encoding is deliberately left unspecified and must be agreed upon bilaterally between implementations?

Clarification on this point would help ensure interoperability and avoid divergent interpretations among OSDM implementations.

Thank you in advance,
Debora

[Deb1484]

Hi @jspetrak ,

as discussed 2 weeks ago on OSDM Friday meeting, I note here that UTF-8 is the character encoding that should be used for textual documents.

Thanks again,
Debora

[ManuelQuemerais]

documented in #1442