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Shlomo Yona writes: > So the processor is still expected to issue a "not well formed" > message, but might still tolerate the result? I'm not sure there is a rigorous meaning for "tolerating" a result. You can write or purchase software to do all sorts of things. What's clear is that the specifications say that your document is not well formed. If you get hold of a piece of software that claims your document >is< well formed, then that software does not conform to the XML Recommendation, or specifically, it does not correctly implement the well-formedness relation defined therein. Now, what does it mean to "tolerate" that not well formed file? Not crash with a stack trace? Maybe. Tell your application: "this is not well formed XML, but you might want to fool with it anyway"? Maybe, but presumably that's only a good thing to do if your application has good need to try to work on even non-well formed XML input. If your application is an XML editor, then there may be good reason for it to take in the document, flag the suspicious parts (the mismatched tags), and keep going. So, we on this mailing list can't tell you what software will meet your needs. We can point out, as I did in my note just sent, that the pertinent specifications define pretty clearly what is and is not well formed XML, when namespaces and schema recommendations apply, etc. What we can do is suggest that when your software accurately reports on how your documents do or don't conform to what those specifications say, that software is in that sense conforming. Beyond that, the specifications don't have much to say, and you need to get software that meets whatever your needs are. As I say, if you're writing an XML editor, for example, there may be good reason to keep going even when the input file is "buggy" (not well formed). That said: for most purposes, the reasons we have carefully defined tests like well-formedness is so that downstream software will be warned consistently when input looks bad. From that perspective: no, your software should not in general "tolerate" bad XML. It should say: this is buggy, and you shouldn't proceed. Noah -------------------------------------- Noah Mendelsohn IBM Corporation One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 1-617-693-4036 --------------------------------------
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