xml-dev - Re: XML errors and fatal errors.

[Chris Maden <crism@oreilly.com>]

[John Cowan]
> Of course.  A simple fix would be to add a sentence to clause 2.1,
> somewhat as follows: "It is a fatal error for a document not to
> match the production _document_."

2. Documents

A data object is an _XML document_ if it is well-formed, as defined in
this specification.

[...]

2.1 Well-Formed XML Documents 

A textual object is a well-formed XML document if:

1. Taken as a whole, it matches the production labeled _document_.

[...]

So, to my reading, if it doesn't match _document_, it isn't XML, and
is outside the scope of the spec.  The XML spec shouldn't dictate
error-handling behavior for non-XML objects; otherwise, future
browsers would be required not to process GIFs, Word documents, HTML,
etc.  That would be silly.

-Chris
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