RE: typing

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 07:47 AM 3/13/01 -0500, Jonathan Borden wrote:
>That is simply an implementation issue (IMHO). Simon St. Laurent has 
>already produced a SAX parser/filter that supplies or replaces a DOCTYPE 
>definition. Dave Brownell's Aelfred2 has sliced out validation into a 
>separate layer above parsing. There you have it. Simon, how many people 
>have downloaded this open source filter?

http://www.simonstl.com/projects/doctypes/

A few hundred downloads, one substantial contribution from Nigel 
Whitaker.  It's not actually a SAX filter - it works on the stream or 
reader before it hits the parser, since the parser itself uses the 
DOCTYPE.  Should work with any Java-based parser, DOM or SAX.

>And if the number isn't terribly high, its not that this hasn't been a 
>terrific idea or implementation, rather because the demand -hasn't- been 
>there, but you now know where to get it.

In most of the XML I've seen, people aren't using DOCTYPE at all.  A lot of 
people who do use DOCTYPE seem to do so because the word 'valid' suggests 
that merely-well-formed is invalid.

Then there are, of course, the people who take DOCTYPE, Schemas, etc. very 
seriously.  In terms of news stories, they're the ones we really hear 
about, but I'm not convinced that they are the majority.



Simon St.Laurent - Associate Editor, O'Reilly and Associates
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books