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Re: The subsetting has begun

• To: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
• Subject: Re: The subsetting has begun
• From: John Cowan <cowan@m...>
• Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 13:19:01 -0500 (EST)
• Cc: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>, Karl Waclawek <karl@w...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <oprkybx1yaezizxn@s...> from Mike Champion at "Feb 21,2003 10:57:27 am"

Mike Champion scripsit:

> I'm not sure what "processing" a DTD means in a technical sense.  Accepting 
> the entity declarations, setting the default attribute values, etc.  but 
> not enforcing any content model constraints?  Or just parsing DTDs and 
> ignoring everthing in there.  (IIRC either would be "legal" for a non- 
> validating parser).  What would you suggest J2ME parsers do?

Only the first course of action is legal for a conformant XML parser,
as Section 5.1 of the XML Rec makes abundantly clear.  For minimal
conformance, a parser has to parse the entire internal subset and report
on well-formedness errors, *and* act on ENTITY, ATTLIST, and NOTATION
declarations it finds there (ELEMENT declarations can be ignored).
Consequently, internal entities must be properly expanded, attribute
defaulting and attribute-value normalization must be properly done, and
declared notations must be reported to the application.

In addition, a minimal parser must not process any declarations that
appear in the internal subset after a reference to a parameter entity.

Code that doesn't do these things isn't an XML parser (it may honorably
be something else, of course).

-- 
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@c...
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_

• References:
  • Re: The subsetting has begun
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>

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