right. the way i remember it is (i should check this, been a little while):
this, at the top of xml files: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
is a 'standard' that an xml file must use. it's a bit like a web page that has:
<!DOCTYPE htmlPUBLIC"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"...