Re: D.1 Distinguish partial and full DTDs?

Right now, XML distinguishes "well-formed" and "valid" documents.  
"Well-formed" may require recourse to part of a DTD, for example entity
declarations and [depending on EMPTY syntax] EMPTY declarations.

However, If you ask an XML processor to validate an instance, that means 
that the appearance of an undeclared element is an error, period.  An 
undeclared tag could be the result of (1) a typographical error while
typing in XML source with Notepad [it *will* happen], or (2) a missing 
declaration in the DTD.  It is not the job of an XML processor to intuit
which is the case.

More concisely, I do *not* favor partial DTD's in the context of validation.

Cheers, Tim Bray
tbray@textuality.com http://www.textuality.com/ +1-604-488-1167

Received on Friday, 25 October 1996 12:04:23 UTC