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Re: SAX and ignorableWhitespace

• To: "Jeff Rafter" <lists@j...>
• Subject: Re: SAX and ignorableWhitespace
• From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
• Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 23:30:51 -0500
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <024a01c3d40d$c0cb2cf0$6403a8c0@ARIMATHEA>
• References: <r02000200-1028-3B006A8A3F3311D8B1470003937A08C2@[192.168.124.11]><Pine.GSO.4.58.0401052012180.18798@i...><021501c3d3f8$0b5e5eb0$6403a8c0@ARIMATHEA><p06010203bc1fceac5c64@[192.168.254.4]><024a01c3d40d$c0cb2cf0$6403a8c0@ARIMATHEA>

At 8:30 PM -0800 1/5/04, Jeff Rafter wrote:


>I am willing to take that on faith, but just for the sake of throroughness,
>my question is more "why must it provide it". It seems that the same
>argument could be made for element and attribute declarations. Clearly the
>parser cannot ignore them, yet it is not required that the information be
>passed in one of the default interfaces-- they are only reported through the
>DeclHandler, an extension interface. So there is a precedent for the parser
>"not ignoring" a section of the document, yet simultaneously "not providing"
>it.

Element and attribute declarations are neither part of the instance 
document nor of the document's information set. "Ignorable" white 
space is. ContentHandler reports the document's content. Ignorable 
white space is part of this content. Element and attribute 
declarations aren't.

And parsers often can and do ignore element and ATTLIST declarations 
in the external DTD subset. They are only required to process those 
in the internal DTD subset, though they may of course process them 
elsewhere.

Bottom line: SAX is designed to report the content of an instance 
document as augmented by the DTD with default attribute values, 
resolved entities, and attribute types. It is not an API for 
processing the DTD itself. DeclHandler is mostly an occasionally 
convenient afterthought that can easily be ignored if you don't need 
it, not part of SAX's core mission.
-- 

   Elliotte Rusty Harold
   elharo@m...
   Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
   http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA

• References:
  • Re: Formalism and complexity
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: Formalism and complexity
    • From: Ian Graham <igraham@i...>
  • SAX and ignorableWhitespace
    • From: "Jeff Rafter" <lists@j...>
  • Re: SAX and ignorableWhitespace
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
  • Re: SAX and ignorableWhitespace
    • From: "Jeff Rafter" <lists@j...>

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