Why must an XML document contain an element?

[Eric Baatz - Sun Microsystems Labs BOS]

My application accepts plain text.  If its client wants it to do
a better job, it can markup the text using an XML syntax.

So, the client could want to send the application something like:

  This is plain text.
  
However, if the application is expecting XML markup, then it would
be nice if everything a client sent was an XML document.  So, for
the sake of clarity and consistency, I can force the client to send:

  <?XML version="1.0" encoding="UCS-2"?>
  This is plain text.
  
Well, that doesn't work, because that isn't a well-formed XML document
because it doesn't have an element, see:

  [23] document ::= Prolog element Misc*
  
So I could force the client to send:

  <?XML version="1.0" encoding="UCS-2"?>
  <foobar/>
  This is plain text.

where "foobar" is the client's choice of a lega name:

  [5] Name ::= (Letter | '_') (NameChar)*

But forcing the inclusion of characters that don't convey any
useful information to the application goes against my sense of
cleanliness.

Why must an XML document include at least one element?


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