Re: Erratum in section 1.1 of Canonical XML

"Joseph M. Reagle Jr." wrote:
> 
> [DanC recommended I also send this question to xml-editor for a answer to
> the question, though CG may still need to take some action.]
> 
> A question was recently raised with respect to Canonical XML specification's
> use of "DTD" to refer to both "document type declaration" and "document type
> definition".
>          http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xml-c14n-20010315

The XML Core WG considered this question of interpretation
of XML 1.0, and we decided (30May2001) that the use of
"document type declaration (DTD)" in the c14n spec is not
consistent with the XML 1.0 spec:

  [Definition: The XML document type declaration contains or
  points to markup declarations that provide a grammar for a
  class of documents. This grammar is known as a document
  type definition, or DTD. ... ]
	-- http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xml-20001006

"document type declaration" is a syntactic term; "DTD"
is not defined to mean exactly the same thing, but rather
to the grammar expressed in a document type declaration.

As the scope of Canonical XML
is the very details of processing characters and bytes
of an XML document, we recommed you don't use "DTD"
where you mean to refer to a specific piece of XML syntax;
rather, use one of the syntactic terms from the XML
spec such as "document type declaration."

e.g. change

- The XML declaration and document type declaration (DTD) are removed

to

+ The XML declaration and document type declaration are removed

and change

- Note that the XPath data model does not create comment nodes
- for comments appearing within the document type declaration (DTD).

to
- Note that the XPath data model does not create comment nodes
- for comments appearing within the document type declaration.

(Hmm... I don't see, in the XML Canonicalization spec,
any uses of DTD to refer to "document type definition.")


Please let us know whether this clarification
is satisfactory.


The XML Core WG does not find any error in the XML 1.0
spec related to this question of interpretation.


-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Wednesday, 30 May 2001 12:21:29 UTC