Question
I have 2 questions I'm hoping you can help me with. First, does a metadata XML file that's separate from the imsmanfest need to be included as a resource in the imsmanifest? Secondly, when I encode an imsmanifest file as utf-8 the ADL test suit complains about the Unicode Byte Order mark. I'm at a loss here the default encoding for XML is utf-8 yet it appears that the test suite is expecting iso-8859-1. What's going on?
Answer
When an external metadata file is referenced from a manifest, it does not need to be listed in the file list of a resource. Similarly the XSD files required for XML schema definition also don't need to be listed.
The Test Suite should be fine with UTF-8 encoding. Like you said, it is the default for all XML. What tool are you using to create the manifest and what locale is your computer operating under? I imagine that the tool is creating a byte order mark that is inconsistent with the declared encoding. The Java XML parser that underlies the Test Suite is very strict and will often flag things like that. I might try creating the manifest in a different tool (perhaps even notepad) to see if that solves the problem. If it still appears to be an error with the Test Suite, you will have to contact ADL about it. We don't have access to the Test Suite's internal code to diagnose and repair bugs.