Suggestions for prod. 68, VC Entity Declared and section 4.4.3

Section 4.1, prod. 68, VC Entity Declared:
 >>In a document with an external subset or parameter entity references 
with " standalone='no'  ", the Name ...<<
Here the scope of the condition >>with " standalone='no' "<< is ambiguous. 
In order to be consistent with the WFC Entity Declared the condition must 
apply to both, "external subset" and "parameter entity references", because 
in a document with an external subset and standalone='yes' a missing entity 
declaration is a well-formedness error. However the wording allows two 
options: "In a document with (A or B) with C" or "In a document with A or 
(B with C)". Of course one can rule out the second option as false on 
carefully comparing the wording of the VC Entity Declared with that of the 
WFC Entity Declared. But it is not easy to figure it out.
However, there is a second problem: The condition of "standalone='no'" is 
equivalent to the condition that no standalone declaration exists, which 
can be inferred from the rule in section 2.9: "If there are external markup 
declarations but there is no standalone document declaration, the value 
'no' is assumed." For clarification it would be good to remind the reader 
of this rule, in particular because the Courier type face of the words 
"standalone='no'" puts an emphasis on an explicit standalone declaration 
which is not intended.
To summarize my suggestion, I would recommend that the sentence
 >>In a document with an external subset or parameter entity references 
with " standalone='no'  ", the Name ...<<
should be changed to something like
 >>For a document with "standalone = 'no'" or no standalone declaration, if 
this document has a DTD with an external subset or parameter entity 
references in its internal subset, the Name ...<<


Section 4.4.3:
"If the entity is external, and the processor is not attempting to validate 
the XML document, the processor MAY, but need not, include the entity's 
replacement text."
Should not the same apply if the entity is internal, but declared in the 
internal subset of a DTD after a reference to a parameter entity that the 
processor did not read? (See also 4.4.2 and the WFC Entity Declared of 
prod. 68.)

-- d.k.


Dr. Dieter Köhler, M.A.
Wissenschaftlicher Assistent
Institut für Philosophie und
Studienzentrum Multimedia
Universität Karlsruhe (TH)

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Received on Wednesday, 6 September 2006 13:21:46 UTC