Re: XML validity and namespaces

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> Rich Salz wrote: 
>> DTD's are ignorant of namespaces.  This means that you cannot write a
>> normative DTD for a namespace
> 
> Actually you can do quite a bit better than that. It's possible to use 
> parameter entity references such that the same DTD can be used for 
> multiple prefixes and the default namespace. The most any instance 
> document needs to do is override two parameter entity declarations.

Yes, it's better than nothing (the SVG 1.1 DTD also does that) but it's 
still not a general (and even less practical) way of validating 
namespaced documents. And Rich's point remains that you cannot write a 
normative DTD for a namespaced language. That's an issue that crops up 
regularly in document-based communities where people have tried to learn 
from HTML's errors and recommend validation against a DTD. 
Unfortunately, since it produces false-negatives, you then end up with 
content producers wondering why their content doesn't validate when 
according to every knowledge of the spec they can muster it is perfectly 
fine.

-- 
Robin Berjon
   Research Scientist
   Expway, http://expway.com/

Received on Sunday, 3 April 2005 23:13:36 UTC