Wording of ASOM from Rick Jelliffe on 2002-01-16 (www-dom@w3.org from January to March 2002)

From: Rick Jelliffe <ricko@allette.com.au>
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 20:18:56 +1100
To: <www-dom@w3.org>
Message-ID: <019001c19e6e$d2b19890$4bc8a8c0@AlletteSystems.com>

In the abstract model object model section 18 is the following:

 "XML defined the "well-formed" (WF) state for documents which are parsed without reference to their DTDs. "

This is not worded well, because WF documents still MUST include internal entities and MAY include external entities (see XML 4.4,3).  However XML says at 2.1 

"[Definition: A textual object is a well-formed XML document if:]
  1.. Taken as a whole, it matches the production labeled document.

  2.. It meets all the well-formedness constraints given in this specification.

  3.. Each of the parsed entities which is referenced directly or indirectly within the document is well-formed."

So even a WF document is parsed with reference to (the entity declarations in) the DTD.

I think it is worthwhile avoiding this mistake, because already so many XML system get entities wrong.

Cheers

Rick Jelliffe

Received on Wednesday, 16 January 2002 04:09:28 UTC