Thank you John Cowan and Tim Bray for your swift responses!

David

On Oct 15, 2017, at 3:12 PM, John Cowan <johnwcowan@g...> wrote:

On Sun, Oct 15, 2017 at 3:18 PM, David John Burrowes <biede0@g...> wrote:

The phrase "and in any parameter entity that they read” is what is puzzling me.  

Yes, it probably should have been "any parameter entity that they choose to read". 

How can I, as a non-validating processor, have a parameter entity that I have read?

Because non-validating parsers are not required to read external entities, it does not follow that they are not allowed to read them.

 

The only way I can make sense of that paragraph is to interpret it as saying:

“…[non-validating processors] are required to process all the declarations they read in the internal DTD up to the first parameter entity reference. However, if a non-validating processor goes beyond the minimum required behavior and instead reads and processes the contents of some parameter entities, then it should stop processing the internal DTD at the point it encounters a reference to a parameter entity that it chose not to read (and process).”

Is there some other interpretation of this that I’m missing? Or is that what most folks think this is saying?

Just so.

-- 

John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan@c...

In politics, obedience and support are the same thing.  --Hannah Arendt