[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Simple XML conformance
Hi, i have been teaching an online course for over a year now (see www.hwg.org) and have encountered a similar problem. It is of course the tools that are at fault. Most of my students run windows, and I find that by using the MSXML parser, IBM's parser in C and James Clarkes parser we can parse and/or validate just about anything. Of the validating parsers my students prefer the IBM parser, as it gives readouts for more than one error. Frank ----- Original Message ----- From: Peter Murray-Rust <peter@u...> To: 'XML Dev' <xml-dev@i...> Sent: Monday, January 17, 2000 5:19 PM Subject: Simple XML conformance > I have been preparing a set of XML documents and a collection of XML-aware > tools to introduce newcomers to XML (on our VirtualXML course). I have > encountered a surprisingly number of cases where an XML tool is unable to > read an XML document. [There is not meant to be anything tricky here since > Henry and I are actually trying to demonstrate how to learn XML by doing. > We are not looking to "torture" the tools - more the reverse.] > > As a collection of XML documents I took: > Jon Bosak's Shakespeare (elements and DTD) > http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210.xml (elements, attributes and > DTD (with PEs)) > http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2/ (elements, attributes, entities and > DTD(with PEs and GEs)) [I point out that this is an excellent document for > showing a wide range of XML constructs in a meaningful way.] > (and a number of examples distributed with tools, including my own). > > Here are some of the problems ( I will not list the tools explicitly) > - tool threw a fatal error because <?xml version="1.0"?> was absent > - tool threw a fatal error because <!DOCTYPE was missing > - REC-xml and DOM specify DTD but spec.dtd is not mounted > - One content model in spec.dtd appeared to be inconsistent with the > REC-xml (I may have th wrong spec.dtd but it was downloaded from w3.org) > - one tool "skipped" general entity references (i.e. did not expand them) > and threw a content model error > - one tool regarded undeclared parameter entities in comments (in > spec.dtd) as errors > - several tools regard the absence of a DTD as a fatal error (i.e. they > appear to be validating by default). > > As an example, I believe that it is likely that many tools when pointed at: > http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210.xml > will fail. > > I expect that by tweaking some of the tools with commandline switches I > might be able to alter their behaviour, but I am slightly surprised that > some tools will only read validatable files (e.g. the file > > <greeting>Hello World</greeting> > > is often not readable (unless "edited" to: > > <?xml version="1.0"?> > <!DOCTYPE greeting [ > <!ELEMENT greeting (ANY)> > ]> > <greeting>Hello World</greeting> > > Is there a definitive resource anywhere which explicitly states what > behaviour can be expected from various types of parsers? I know it is > inferable from the spec, but I suspect that not all implementers have taken > identical interpretations. I would ideally like to have a matrix of parsers > against standard "correct" [not always "valid"] documents and see how many > conform. > > Henry and I are obviously keen to show that XML is simple to use with the > correct tools and that interoperability is achievable. > > TIA > > P. > (http://www.cmlconsulting.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/ or CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 > Please note: New list subscriptions now closed in preparation for transfer to OASIS. > 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/ or CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 Please note: New list subscriptions now closed in preparation for transfer to OASIS.
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