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Re: entity definitions

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: entity definitions
• From: richard@c... (Richard Tobin)
• Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:29:09 +0100 (BST)
• Cc:
• In-reply-to: <200404260945.KAA11264@p...>
• Organization: HCRC, University of Edinburgh

>There was a request at XML 1.1 to make an undefined entity (that is,
>undefined by dtd) a validity rather than WF error, exactly to allow this
>kind of alternative syntax, but it wasn't accepted.

I'm sure you can find plenty of discussion about this in the xml-dev
archives, so I'll just make one point.  Changing the spec to make
something a validity error won't magically make existing software
accept these documents, nor will it answer the question of what XSLT
or any other software is going to do when it encounters an unexpected
unexpanded entity.

What is needed is prototype implementations.  You can do this now,
without anyone changing the spec.  Write a preprocessor to implement
whatever entity definition mechanism you like.  Modify a SAX parser,
and Mozilla, to do it.  Once there are prototypes, people will start
asking for it in products.

I've several times planned to do a prototype myself - and I think I've
posted a possible syntax - but there's always been something more
urgent.

It's not standards-lawyering that's needed, but code!

-- Richard

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