xml-dev - Re: Simple XML conformance

["Frank Boumphrey" <bckman@ix.netcom.com>]

Hi,
i have been teaching an online course for over a year now (see www.hwg.org)
and have encountered a similar problem. It is of course the tools that are
at fault. Most of my students run windows, and I find that by using the
MSXML parser, IBM's parser in C and James Clarkes parser we can parse and/or
validate just about anything.

Of the validating parsers my students prefer the IBM parser, as it gives
readouts for more than one error.

Frank
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Murray-Rust <peter@ursus.demon.co.uk>
To: 'XML Dev' <xml-dev@ic.ac.uk>
Sent: Monday, January 17, 2000 5:19 PM
Subject: Simple XML conformance


> I have been preparing a set of XML documents and a collection of XML-aware
> tools to introduce newcomers to XML (on our VirtualXML course). I have
> encountered a surprisingly number of cases where an XML tool is unable to
> read an XML document. [There is not meant to be anything tricky here since
> Henry and I are actually trying to demonstrate how to learn XML by doing.
> We are not looking to "torture" the tools - more the reverse.]
>
> As a collection of XML documents I took:
> Jon Bosak's Shakespeare (elements and DTD)
> http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210.xml (elements, attributes and
> DTD (with PEs))
> http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2/ (elements, attributes, entities and
> DTD(with PEs and GEs)) [I point out that this is an excellent document for
> showing a wide range of XML constructs in a meaningful way.]
> (and a number of examples distributed with tools, including my own).
>
> Here are some of the problems ( I will not list the tools explicitly)
> - tool threw a fatal error because <?xml version="1.0"?> was absent
> - tool threw a fatal error because <!DOCTYPE was missing
> - REC-xml and DOM specify DTD but spec.dtd is not mounted
> - One content model in spec.dtd appeared to be inconsistent with the
> REC-xml (I may have th wrong spec.dtd but it was downloaded from w3.org)
> - one tool "skipped" general entity references (i.e. did not expand them)
> and threw a content model error
> - one tool regarded undeclared parameter entities in comments (in
> spec.dtd) as errors
> - several tools regard the absence of a DTD as a fatal error (i.e. they
> appear to be validating by default).
>
> As an example, I believe that it is likely that many tools when pointed
at:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210.xml
> will fail.
>
> I expect that by tweaking some of the tools with commandline switches I
> might be able to alter their behaviour, but I am slightly surprised that
> some tools will only read validatable files (e.g. the file
>
> <greeting>Hello World</greeting>
>
> is often not readable (unless "edited" to:
>
> <?xml version="1.0"?>
> <!DOCTYPE greeting [
> <!ELEMENT greeting (ANY)>
> ]>
> <greeting>Hello World</greeting>
>
> Is there a definitive resource anywhere which explicitly states what
> behaviour can be expected from various types of parsers? I know it is
> inferable from the spec, but I suspect that not all implementers have
taken
> identical interpretations. I would ideally like to have a matrix of
parsers
> against standard "correct" [not always "valid"] documents and see how many
> conform.
>
> Henry and I are obviously keen to show that XML is simple to use with the
> correct tools and that interoperability is achievable.
>
> TIA
>
> P.
> (http://www.cmlconsulting.com)
>
>
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xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ or CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
Please note: New list subscriptions now closed in preparation for transfer to OASIS.