Re: layers of options in XML processing

[ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Henry S. Thompson)]

"Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com> writes:

> This is just a loose exploration of the different factors which can
> currently affect the information presented by a conformant 'XML' parser to
> an application.  These different kinds of processing which appear to be
> legal according to various W3C specs, not all of which are complete.  I'm
> hoping to express this somewhat more formally in the new year, but thought
> I'd throw it into the world and see what people think of the stack now.
> 
> I. XML 1.0
> 
> 1) Validating parser - will retrieve external DTD, default attributes
> (including xmlns), resolve entities
> 
> 2) Non-validating parser - may or may not retrieve external DTD, default
> attributes, resolve entities

You've left out whitespace normalization (some happens in both cases,
some only when attribute types are known) and establishing attribute
types (ID/IDREF being the most important, but not the only, cases).

Similarly for XML Schema, where the PSVI (post schema-validation
infoset) has a rich set of additional information, including type
information and validation assessment outcomes.

ht
-- 
  Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
          W3C Fellow 1999--2001, part-time member of W3C Team
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