Re: More Conformance Test suite questions

[Rob Lugt <roblugt@elcel.com>]

Gary Stephenson wrote
>
> My question is:  Given that the reference to "bad-pe" is _not_ to be
expanded
> (due to it's appearance in an attribute value), is a validator required to
> open and attempt to parse the malformed external entity "pe01.ent"?
Obviously
> this test is predicated on an affirmative answer, but is it correct?
>

Gary,

I can see no reason why an XML processor should attempt to read an external
entity that is not referenced.  I think the XML recommendation supports this
statement.  For a start, only validating processors must read external
entities.  Secondly, the XML recommendation in section 4.4.3. [1] states:

"When an XML processor recognizes a reference to a parsed entity, in order
to validate the document, the processor must include its replacement text."

So, I suggest you only need to read external entities when they are
referenced.

Regards
Rob

--
Rob Lugt
ElCel Technology
http://www.elcel.com/


[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#include-if-valid