Re: On Henry's comment about documents with DOCTYPE but without markup declaration

Henry S. Thompson scripsit:

> It doesn't imply that to me!  I read the conformance section as
> meaning that validity constraints only operate in the presence of a
> document type declaration.  

Clause 5 (Conformance) talks only about non-validating and validating
processors, not about valid and not valid / invalid documents.  Furthermore,
it says that a validating processor must at user option report violations
of VCs.  I think it's clear from my previous posting (q.v.!) that
the document "<html/>" violates exactly one VC.

> So it's perfectly possible to be well-formed and invalid.  

Nobody disagrees with that.  The issue is whether "invalid" means
something other than the negation of "valid" within the universe of
well-formed XML documents.

> Strings are either XML or they're not.  It's slightly dangerous to
> write "not well-formed XML" -- it's okay if understood as meaning (not
> (well-formed XML)), but not as meaning ((not well-formed) XML).

+1

> If a string _is_ well-formed XML, I think there are two choices,
> one dependent on the other:
> 
> Does it have a document type definition?
> 
>   If so, is it valid or not, per the conformance section?  If it isn't
>   valid per the conformance section, we might agree to call it
>   'invalid'.
> 
>   If not, there is nothing more to be said.  In particular, it doesn't
>   make sense to label it 'valid' _or_ 'invalid'.

Okay, your position is completely clear: I just find it deeply
counterintuitive.

-- 
All Gaul is divided into three parts: the part          John Cowan
that cooks with lard and goose fat, the part            http://ccil.org/~cowan
that cooks with olive oil, and the part that            cowan@ccil.org
cooks with butter. --David Chessler

Received on Tuesday, 28 January 2014 18:24:15 UTC