xml-dev - Re: Parser Behaviour (serious)

[Sean McGrath <sean@digitome.com>]

[Peter Murray-Rust]

[Example of validating parser barfing on unresolvable URI elided]

>
>I still believe that undefined parser behaviour is going to be a major
>deterrent to may people who want to take up XML. I have posted on this
>before. I am going to keep on about it. The most common reaction I seem to
>have so far is "Well that's how XML behaves - it's *your* problem to decide
>how to process XML". This isn't good enough. In the current case I simply
>want to switch off the parser's attempt to resolve the DTD. I would
>appreciate something like:
>
>	"Parser failed to resolve external SYSTEM identifier in DOCTYPE:
>http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd
>	  To disable DTD look-up use -nosysid option"
>
>So, for about the third time (and it took 3 times to get SAX1.0 off the
>ground, what are we going to do about specifying parser behaviour? I have
>shown in public how the failure to process external entities breaks systems. 
>
>Until we resolve this question (and probably several others), XML 1.0 is
>broken as an interoperable "standard"
>

I could not agree more. That is why I harp on about the XFM
(XML Features Manifest) idea so much. It would give XML
parser writers a standard way of picking up parsing
options such as "-nosysid " above.

It also gives XML document creators a place to say
things like "my XML documents reference non-local entities"
and so on.

regards,

Sean,




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