Re: Fwd: XHTML character entity support

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 7:15 AM, Geoffrey Sneddon <gsneddon@opera.com> wrote:
> Shelley Powers wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 3:28 AM, Simon Pieters <simonp@opera.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:41:24 +0100, John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Simon Pieters scripsit:
>>>>
>>>>> What is being discussed is not adding predefined entities. What is
>>>>> being
>>>>> discussed is making certain doctypes map to DTDs that contain just
>>>>> entity
>>>>> declarations (which is what Firefox, WebKit and Opera do today).
>>>>
>>>> Well, any non-validating parser is free to do that today.  (It's not
>>>> quite
>>>> clear to me from the XML Rec whether a validating parser is compelled
>>>> to actually read an external DTD subset, or whether it may simply assume
>>>> what it contains.)
>>>>
>>>> The downside is that some non-validating parsers, those that do not read
>>>> the external subset, will reject the document as not well-formed.
>>>
>>> Or they can fail to expand the entities without a fatal error (like Opera
>>> does). Either way, this is exactly the issue. If I understand Alexey
>>> correctly, he wants to remove the downside by having a requirement that
>>> UAs
>>> have the mapping for a handful of doctypes.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Simon Pieters
>>> Opera Software
>>>
>>>
>>
>> But isn't Opera's approach in violation of the XML specification? I
>> don't consider myself an XML expert, but my understanding is that  an
>> unparsed entity is a fatal error, and an unrecognized entity is an
>> unparsed entity.
>
> It's only a fatal error if you are a validating parser. You're free to do as
> you please with the error you get with a non-validating parser and there are
> external entities in the document.
>
> --
> Geoffrey Sneddon — Opera Software
> <http://gsnedders.com/>
> <http://www.opera.com/>
>

I don't believe the XML specification differs when it comes to how
validating and non-validating parsers handle XML that is not well
formed. And according to my understanding, the use of an undefined
entity is not well formed XML. Do you have a reference in the XML
specification that provides support for your contention?

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying I can't find anything
that would back up what you're saying.

Shelley

Received on Tuesday, 3 November 2009 14:06:54 UTC