[svgwg] Pull Request: Clarify that SVG requires well-formed XML, not valid XML

vlakoff has just submitted a new pull request for https://github.com/w3c/svgwg:

== Clarify that SVG requires well-formed XML, not valid XML ==
Addresses #960. cc @real-or-random

## Changes

### Drop "valid and" from the Document Conformance Classes intro

The intro sentence currently reads:

> Additional conformance classes depend on whether the content is also valid and well-formed XML.

None of the conformance classes defined in this section require XML *validity* in the XML 1.0 sense — that is, conformance to a DTD. Only *well-formedness* is required. Removing "valid and" brings the intro into agreement with the conformance classes that follow it.

### Add a clarifying note

Adds a note immediately after the intro paragraph making two things explicit:

- SVG 2 defines no DTD, and user agents do not perform DTD-based validation.
- A `<!DOCTYPE>` declaration and an XML declaration (`<?xml …?>`) are neither required nor recommended for SVG documents served as `image/svg+xml`.

Without this note, a reader could reasonably infer from the surrounding XML-related language that some form of XML validity is expected. The note removes that ambiguity without touching any normative text beyond the one-word fix above.

## Tests

No web-platform-tests PR is needed. This is a purely editorial change: no normative requirements are added or removed.

See https://github.com/w3c/svgwg/pull/1109


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Received on Friday, 15 May 2026 05:40:15 UTC