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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Entity support in XML parsers (was: UTF-8+names)
 From: "John Cowan" <cowan@m...> > Bob Foster scripsit: > > > XML does not require parsers to support entities apart from validation > > ObMemeStomping: This is not true. XML processors, validating or not, > must support internal entities that are defined in the internal subset. That's swell if you suppose that users require only internal entities with simple definitions. External parsed entities are required to be included only if validating, even if they are defined in the internal subset. So entities cannot be used as includes, an important use case. Parameter entities are often used to define the content of general entities, but this usage is not allowed in the internal subset; in the external subset, parameter entities need only be included if validating. But of course, the external subset itself need only be read if validating. Then, for this point to be relevant to the subject at hand, users would have to be satisfied with a feature that requires them to include every entity declaration used in a document in its internal subset. I don't think so. (If I did think so, I would simply add a feature to the editor that, every time a user wrote a reference to an entity in a document, automatically reached out to a user-defined set of DTDs and added the definition to the internal subset, analogous to the way many editors handle Java import declarations. Problem solved.) No comment on the remainder, because it doesn't address the needs of users who want validation by a non-DTD schema language in combination with entity expansion. Bob Foster > Something I've long wanted to see is a tool that takes a full DTD > and squashes it down to the bare minimum required for use as an internal > subset to preserve all DTD infoset effects but *not* validity. In > particular: > > 1) Expand all parameter entities and eliminate all parameter entity > declarations > > 2) Eliminate all attribute declarations that are CDATA and either #IMPLIED > or #REQUIRED > > 3) Eliminate all element declarations that are ANY, EMPTY, or mixed content, > and simplify all element-content ones to <!ELEMENT foo (foo)> or > something of the sort > > A reasonable implementation strategy would be to start with James Clark's > DTDinst program (http://www.thaiopensource.com/relaxng/dtdinst) and > then use XSLT (with text output mode) to generate the new DTD. > > Anyone interested in tackling it? > > -- > In politics, obedience and support John Cowan <jcowan@r...> > are the same thing. --Hannah Arendt http://www.ccil.org/~cowan 
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