Re: XML processing experiments

Richard Tobin (richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk)
Fri, 7 Nov 1997 16:48:16 GMT


> >(suppose foo is defined as "a<b/>c";
> >then the first bit returned from "x&foo;y" is "xa" - as far as I can
> >tell this is quite legal XML).

> I don't think this is legal. The working draft (sec. 4.1) says:
> "The logical and physical structures (elements and entities) in an XML
> document must be synchronous. Tags and elements must each begin and end in
> the same entity, but may refer to other entities internally; comments,
> processing instructions, character references, and entity references must
> each be contained entirely within a single entity"

I don't see how that excludes my example. The tags and elements *do*
begin and end in the same entity. There are no comments, PIs, or
character references. The entity reference is contained within a
single entity.

The point is that the draft says nothing about about *pcdata* starting
and ending in the same entity. If it did, it would have to be careful
to define exactly what it meant by "ending", since in something like
"<!ENTITY name 'richard'> ... <p>my name is &name;</p>" (which we
certainly want to be legal) the last character of the pcdata is in a
different entity from the first.

-- Richard