Re: [xml-dev] ten years later, time to repeat it?

[Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>]

bryan rasmussen wrote:
> Well, how about disallowing DTDs for validation, just allow the
> entitty declaring functionality with only internal entity declarations
> allowed, external DTDs should have absolute url. That gets rid of a
> good deal of complexity.
> 

It really doesn't, I'm afraid. You still have to be able to parse a 
pretty complete internal DTD subset. You still have browsers and parsers 
that don't handle the internal subset at all.

Entity definition is precisely where the nastiest interoperability 
problems arise. Mere validation is not nearly so dangerous. It's when 
the act of validating changes the infoset that we run into problems.

+ You can't always reasonably use or want an absolute URL.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
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