• From: Kay Michael <Michael.Kay@i...>
• To: 'Michel Rodriguez' <mrodrigu@i...>, xml-dev@l...
• Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 18:59:17 +0100

A DTD that allows mixed content also allows empty content.

Mike Kay

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michel Rodriguez [mailto:mrodrigu@i...]
> Sent: 25 July 2000 18:13
> To: xml-dev@l...
> Subject: Can an element be sometimes empty?
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I came accross an interesting albeit theoretical problem today: can an
> element in a well-formed XML document be sometimes empty and sometimes
> not?
> 
> <doc>
>   <weird_element/>
>   <weird_element>with a content </weird_element>
> </doc>
> 
> I saw nothing in the spec about this situation, but on the 
> other hand this
> poor well-formed document has no way of ever becoming valid, 
> as the spec
> states (rule 46) that an element's contentspec is either 
> EMPTY or MIXED or
> children. So you can't write a DTD for it.
> 
> Expat does not seem to have a problem with it though.
> 
> Is this a hole in the spec or did I miss something?
> 
> Michel Rodriguez
> m.v.rodriguez@i...
> http://www.xmltwig.cx
> 

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