Re: A note to implementors about entities in external instance data

On Oct 13, 2006, at 15:32, Steven Pemberton wrote:

> Seeing the following:
> 	http://www.w3.org/2002/04/xml_bugs/#bug4

The document is clearly referring to Gecko's behavior without naming  
names.

In the case of Gecko the entity resolver fools the XML processor into  
thinking that the XML processor has seen the DTD. Hence the wording  
of the error message is wrong when the system is observed as a whole.

However, even though Gecko gives cites a wrong reason for the error,  
it is in theory permissible for an application to emit an error in  
the case discussed. The XML spec moves the problem to the application  
in that situation. The app is allowed to handle the situation by  
halting. It may not be a reasonable thing for a browser to do, but  
the XML spec doesn't specify app-level error behavior.

But then, it is not reasonable to rely on DTDs on the Web, so this  
slight misfeature in Gecko is useful in discouraging the use of DTDs.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Friday, 27 October 2006 12:03:30 UTC