Re: Comments on XPP draft o2 24 January 2013

C. M. Sperberg-McQueen writes:

> On Oct 30, 2013, at 4:40 AM, Henry S. Thompson wrote:
>> ...
>> 
>>> The absence of any passage in XPP where a possible distinction
>>> between "reading" and "processing" external declarations makes a
>>> difference also suggests (alas) that XPP provides no way to describe
>>> the fairly common class of non-validating DTD-aware processors,
>>> which process external entity declarations and read other external
>>> declarations but do not use (or process) them.
>> 
>> I'm now confused by what _you_ mean by 'process'.  The paragraph in
>> the XML spec. which is relevant is, I believe, [1].  I read that
>> paragraph as saying that what in my experience is the common class of
>> processors (including both RXP and Saxon in their default
>> configuration) do is read _and_ process all external declarations, as
>> defined in [1].  Can you clarify?  Our specific goal in XPP in the
>> external declarations profile was precisely to give a name to this
>> class.
>> 
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#dt-use-mdecl
>
> I feel like a poker player being asked to show his cards by someone
> who does not want to show theirs.
>
> If you tell me what you believe the words "read" and "process" mean
> in the XPP spec, I'll tell you want I meant by them in the paragraph you
> quote above.

I wasn't trying to be coy, I thought the reference to the XML
spec. was sufficient.  Here's what it [1] says, and that's what the
XPP spec. means too:

 [Definition: While they are not required to check the document for
  validity, they are REQUIRED to *process* all the declarations they
  read in the internal DTD subset and in any parameter entity that
  they read, up to the first reference to a parameter entity that they
  do not read; that is to say, they MUST use the information in those
  declarations to normalize attribute values, include the replacement
  text of internal entities, and supply default attribute values.]

ht

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#dt-use-mdecl
-- 
       Henry S. Thompson, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
      10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
                Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
                       URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/
 [mail from me _always_ has a .sig like this -- mail without it is forged spam]

Received on Wednesday, 30 October 2013 17:45:46 UTC