Processing external DTD subset as part of DTD validation

[Mikko Saesmaa <saesmaa@messi.uku.fi>]

Hi all,

we are fiddling with the idea of implementing a syntax-aware DTD
editor on top of an XML parser, using Java. There must be some
native API methods for, say, Apache Crimson or Apache Xerces that
receive and process an external DTD subset, and report any errors
using SAX Exceptions. Any hints for finding
and using such methods would be appreciated.

As far as we know, JAXP does not support the validation of DTDs
directly. Our original idea was to wrap the DTD inside the
prolog of a dummy document instance. The problem with this approach
is that this way we would pass the declarations to the parser as an
/internal/ DTD subset, which has different restrictions on the use of
parameter entities than an external subset.

Thanks,

Mikko Saesmaa