Encoding in XML file

I was working with an XML file that contains some German characters. If I just create a default XML file it is giving error in IE. If I setup encoding=UTF-8, it is working fine

I did a google and came to know that different encoding exists like UTF-8, UTF-16 etc. Can somebody point out all the encodings that are valid and how they work?

What encoding is universal and can show any characters?

Thanks in advance.

Karam

From the XML 1.0 specification:

"In an encoding declaration, the values "UTF-8", "UTF-16", "ISO-
10646-UCS-2", and "ISO-10646-UCS-4" should be used for the
various encodings and transformations of Unicode / ISO/IEC
10646, the values "ISO-8859-1", "ISO-8859-2", ... "ISO-8859-9"
should be used for the parts of ISO 8859, and the values "ISO-
2022-JP", "Shift_JIS", and "EUC-JP" should be used for the
various encoded forms of JIS X-0208-1997. XML processors may
recognize other encodings;"

To answer the second part of your email, of the above,
ISO-10646 (similar to, but not indentical to Unicode) supports
the most characters and glyphs.

- Finnbarr