[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: SUMMARY: XML Validation Issues (was: several threads)
I would ask what is the reason for a document needing validation parsing. I see 3 reasons: 1. To include entities and attribute defaults that are external to the document 2. To indicate the document should match a given structure (the DTD) 3. To describe the structure the document matches On the second point, it can be argued that any document that declares its DTD met that structure when it was created. In other words, you don't expect such a document to fail validation. So why go through validation at all? On the third point, consider the cases where a DTD can't completely express the constraints on the document. Or where the application that produced the document and the one that consumes it both implement the document structure in code rather than a DTD. Such an application may use a well-formed parser to read the document and then apply the constraints via explicit code. For these reasons I would: 1. Allow a document to indicate the structure that it meets, which can be a totally abstract URI and/or a DTD. 2. Require well-formed parsers to handle attribute defaults, entities, and external files but not element declarations. 3. A validating parser would add processing element declarations and full attribute processing. 4. An application (the user of the parser) selects if the parser will validate and in fact can substitute its own selected DTD. Marc B McDonald Principal Software Scientist Design Intelligence, Inc www.design-intelligence.com ---------- From: Simon St.Laurent [SMTP:simonstl@s...] Sent: Thursday, April 08, 1999 8:57 AM To: XML-Dev Mailing list Subject: Re: SUMMARY: XML Validation Issues (was: several threads) At 08:22 AM 4/8/99 -0700, Tim Bray wrote: >>(not to UI designers, provide two >>separate icons for "validate" and "check wf" ) > >Yes! IE5 has a nice validation capability, but no way (that I've >found) for the user to invoke it. Is there one? See http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/samples/internet/xml/xml_validator/ defau lt.asp. I don't know that it counts as 'user invocation' the way you meant, though. >Good question; I can see both sides. But in fact, Chris, I think what's >motivating you here is less a concern for forcing validation than a >concern for forcing the use of the external DTD for entity declarations >& attribute defaults and so on. Which is fine; but I think there are >2 separate questions here: > > - should a document be able to ask for validation > - should a document be able to ask for guaranteed reading of all > external entities > >Related but distinct. -Tim And that's precisely why XML Processing Description Language (XPDL) separates them. See http://purl.oclc.org/NET/xpdl for details. It also provides a mechanism for making the readability of these features optional, when appropriate, though the default requires the resources to be read. Simon St.Laurent XML: A Primer Sharing Bandwidth / Cookies http://www.simonstl.com xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...) xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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