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An element's value is an invalid Unicode string ... how can it bewell-fo

• From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
• To: "xml-dev@lists.xml.org" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2013 18:26:47 +0000

Hi Folks,

Consider this Spanish name: Martiñez

Instead of using the ñ character, one can use the (base) "n" character followed by a combining tilde (hex 303) character.

So that Spanish name can be equivalently expressed as: Martiñez

Here is an XML document that uses the latter form:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Name>Martin&#x303;ez</Name>

I wrote a stylesheet that uses the substring() function to extract the combining tilde character and onward:

    <xsl:template match="/">
            <Result>
                    <xsl:value-of select="substring(Name, 7)" /> 
            </Result>     
    </xsl:template>

The output is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Result>Þez</Result>

I checked it for well-formedness and the XML Parser says it is well-formed.

According to the book, Fonts & Encodings (p. 61, first paragraph):

    ... we select a substring that begins
    with a combining character, this new
    string will not be a valid string in
     Unicode.

The value of the <Result> element is not a valid Unicode string, so how can it be a well-formed XML document?

/Roger

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: An element's value is an invalid Unicode string ...how can it be well-formed?
    • From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>
  • Re: An element's value is an invalid Unicode string ... how can it be well-formed?
    • From: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>