RE: Erratum in section 1.1 of Canonical XML

At 5:22 PM -0700 5/9/01, John Boyer wrote:


Actually, I think the fact that there is NOT a HUGE difference is 
precisely why we are having this conversation in the first place. 
You're using the first couple of sentences in the so-called 
definition to make a distinction that really doesn't make a lot of 
difference.  You cannot introduce a document type 'definition' into 
an XML document without a DOCTYPE, and you cannot have a DOCTYPE 
which does not introduce a document type 'definition'.


Actually you can. Consider this legal DOCTYPE

<!DOCTYPE MYROOT [

]>

In fact the grammar even allows:

<!DOCTYPE MYROOT>

These are legal document type declarations according to production 28:

'<!DOCTYPE' S Name (S ExternalID)? S? ('[' (markupdecl | DeclSep)* ']' S?)? '>'

However, there's no DTD anywhere in sight. Needless to say, a 
document which contained such a document type declaration would not 
be valid, but validity is not required.  Such a document could be 
well-formed.
-- 

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| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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Received on Thursday, 10 May 2001 10:05:27 UTC