Re: [xml-dev] Debating "civil disobedience" against overlycomplicatedspecs

[Evan Lenz <elenz@xyzfind.com>]

Eric van der Vlist wrote:
> Even this definition is blur and cannot fully answer the question asked
> by SOAP: is the doctype markup syntax or document content?
>
> I would say it is markup syntax, but this perception light be
> application dependant...

DOCTYPE declarations are not in this gray area by any precedent that I've
seen.

As you pointed out in the previously cited email, the XML Recommendation
very carefully spells out the rules for validating and non-validating
parsers. There is no option for usurping those rules and disallowing DOCTYPE
declarations.

I know of no other vocabulary that calls itself an application of XML in
which I do not have the freedom, if I so choose, to declare an internal DTD
subset in order to declare an internal entity. According to the XML spec,
this practice is 100% interoperable among all XML processors, because they
are *all* required to process the internal subset and resolve internal
entities declared therein. An application without this guarantee should not
be called an XML application. Instead, it is an application built on
something other than an "XML processor".

Sure, there are interoperability issues--they are part-and-parcel of the
shades-of-conformance mess we get with XML 1.0. sml-dev and perhaps the XML
Core WG can deal with these issues. However, they are not well addressed by
putting the name "XML" on something that simply dismisses large parts of the
XML Recommendation.

Evan Lenz
XYZFind Corp.