- From: Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>
- Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 08:07:23 -0400
- To: public-xml-id@w3.org
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