[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View

• To: xml-dev <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 17:13:16 -0500
• In-reply-to: <200210312218.RAA04265@m...>

jcowan@r... (John Cowan) writes:
>This is a subtle error in understanding XML.  It is simply not the case
>that a non-validating parser is free to completely ignore the internal
>DTD subset.  Certain parts of it, specifically ATTLIST declarations
>that provide defaults or non-CDATA attribute types, and internal ENTITY
>declarations, *must* be processed by all conforming XML parsers.

While it's certainly a MUST in XML 1.0, I have to say that it's a
serious nuisance to people writing lightweight parsers (which is why TAM
is the Tiny API for Markup, not the Tiny API for XML) and DTDs
combination of structural information and replacement content is a
fairly questionable choice as far as layering is concerned.

I can't say I expect XML 1.0 to change, and that may be all that the W3C
is concerned about, but I suspect there are a lot of developers who find
this solution to be a hack at best.

-------------
Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA
http://simonstl.com may be my URI
http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI
urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
    • From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>

• References:
  • Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
    • From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>

• Prev by Date: Re: Newbie question:DTD problem(#PCDATA)
• Next by Date: Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
• Previous by thread: Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
• Next by thread: Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread