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Re: Error and Fatal Error

• From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>
• To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
• Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:37:13 +0100

> 2) some say if XML has illegal characters it is not XML but I say - 
> then why does
> the spec talk about errors in the XML (if the XML had errors, then by 
> that reasoning
> it wouldn't be XML, ...)

If you're going to get legalese about it, then:

(a) XML is a language defined in a specification.

(b) A document is not a language, so a document is never XML; nor can 
"an XML" contain illegal characters, nor can "the XML" contain errors.

(c) The XML language specification defines what it means for a piece of 
text to be a "well-formed XML document". It's a slightly unfortunate 
term, because it's easy to imagine that it implies the existence of XML 
documents that are not well-formed. But that would be a misreading of 
the spec: no such category exists.

(d) The specification never talks about "errors in the XML". That would 
be a contradiction in terms. The specification in fact doesn't give a 
name to the thing that has errors, though it would be reasonable to talk 
about "errors in the input to the XML processor".

Michael Kay
Saxonica

• Follow-Ups:
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• References:
  • Error and Fatal Error
    • From: Joe Fawcett <joefawcett@hotmail.com>
  • Re: Error and Fatal Error
    • From: Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>
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    • From: Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>
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    • From: David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>
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    • From: Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>
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    • From: Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>