Editorial comment on PR draft

The PR draft states:

Declarations in either the internal or external subset of an XML 
document can declare attributes to be of type ID. However, some 
specifications, notably [SOAP], forbid an internal subset, and 
processing the external subset is optional for conformant XML 
processors, leaving no guarantee that all consumers of the XML document 
will be able to successfully recognize the identifiers.

This was quoted in a  recent CNET article where I noticed that this 
implied that SOAP allowed an external DTD subset. It doesn't. In fact, 
what SOAP forbids is not the internal DTD subset. It is the entire 
DOCTYPE declaration. I propose rewriting this along these lines:

Declarations in either the internal or external DTD subset of an XML 
document can declare attributes to be of type ID. However, some 
specifications, notably SOAP, forbid DTDs completely; and processing the 
external DTD subset is optional for conformant XML processors, leaving 
no guarantee that all consumers of the XML document will be able to 
successfully recognize the identifiers.

Notice also that I have replaced "internal or external subset" with 
"internal or external DTD subset" which is I think a little clearer. You 
have to be pretty deep in XML wonkery to realize that "internal subset" 
means "internal DTD subset".

Also note that the comma in "forbid an internal subset, and processing 
the external subset" should be a semicolon.

There may well be a better way to fix this paragraph than the one I've 
suggested. That would be fine. However I do think this paragraph is less 
clear than it should be.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim

Received on Wednesday, 13 July 2005 12:07:29 UTC