xml-dev - Re: Parser Question.

[John Cowan <cowan@locke.ccil.org>]

Brown, Bryan scripsit:

> A parser should issue an error because the entity decl in the internal
> subset references a notation "gif" which has not yet been declared. But in
> the XML conformance tests in one of the sun tests a very similiar example
> arises and the Conformace test says that it should be a valid document. Is
> this correct ?

There is no requirement that a notation declaration appear before the
unparsed entity declaration.  In general, the only order dependency
in DTDs is that parameter entities must not be used before they are
declared.

> Question 3.
> In the external subset PEs can occur anywhere, this seems to me to make the
> process of parsing an external production very complicated because I need to
> check at each step of the way if the next token is a PE reference, does
> anyone have a better way ?

That's the way it's done.  An easy way is to check at a low level
for &s, capture the following name and ;, and "push back" the definition
onto the input stream (most environments don't allow pushing back an
arbitrary number of characters, except for Java, so you may need to
build the facility yourself).

> Question 4.
> The spec states that if a SystemLiteral has a fragment identifier the parser
> may signal an error, yet the conformance tests offer a document which is
> supposed not-wf because it has a SystemLiteral with a fragment identifier.
> So is it an error or is it the parser option what to do ?

It is none too clear; the errata process is taking up that very point.

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
	Yes, I know the message date is bogus.  I can't help it.
		--me, on far too many occasions

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