xml-dev - Re: SDD again

[alex@veosystems.com]

> 
> At 06:17 PM 5/8/98 -0700, alex@veosystems.com wrote:
> >Currently, validating parsers are the only real *safe* bet.
> 
> Whatever the limitations of the SDD, this statement is simply
> false.  There are many useful applications for non-validating
> processors; in fact, I suspect, a very large majority of XML
> apps. -Tim

No, it is not false.  I hightlighted the word 'safe'.  If you absolutely
*must* know that everything was read and interpreted correctly, you *must*
use a validating parser.  There are many applications where this is not
an absolute requirement and, thus, you may use a well-formed parser.

In addition, there are some applications that need some level of guarantee
about whether external declaration subsets will be read and honored.  It is
this class of applications that we cannot address today with the current
definition of well-formed.

I should have made my idea of 'safe' far more clear. ;-)

I like the concept of well-formed but we need to better define what is
expected or required for the document to be processed correctly.  Currently,
we can handle a large majority of applications with well-formed parsers.  The
issue is, when certain questions of guarantees comes into play, the only
choice is a validating parser when one can envision "steps" of 
feature/functions between well-formed and validating.

=============================================================================
R. Alexander Milowski      alex@veosystems.com     (612) 825-4132       v|e|o
                          MOS | sed s/SG/X/g > DYX

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