Re: XML errors and fatal errors.

Chris Maden (crism@oreilly.com)
Fri, 7 Aug 1998 12:58:13 -0400 (EDT)

[John Cowan]
> Of course. A simple fix would be to add a sentence to clause 2.1,
> somewhat as follows: "It is a fatal error for a document not to
> match the production _document_."

2. Documents

A data object is an _XML document_ if it is well-formed, as defined in
this specification.

[...]

2.1 Well-Formed XML Documents

A textual object is a well-formed XML document if:

1. Taken as a whole, it matches the production labeled _document_.

[...]

So, to my reading, if it doesn't match _document_, it isn't XML, and
is outside the scope of the spec. The XML spec shouldn't dictate
error-handling behavior for non-XML objects; otherwise, future
browsers would be required not to process GIFs, Word documents, HTML,
etc. That would be silly.

-Chris

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