Entities and non-validation

Shawn Silverman shawn at activated.com
Mon Nov 1 06:04:04 GMT 1999


Hi, all.

How should non-validating parsers handle undeclared:

	1) Parameter entities in the DTD
	2) General entities in the DTD
	3) General entities in the document

I like to qualify my question by stating that it is assumed that all of
these entities are used appropriately, ie. PE's only in the DTD, GE's
inside attribute values and content, etc.

I am under the impression that if standalone='no' for the document that
a non-validating parser can assume that all undeclared entities are
external.  Is this correct?

My second question is similar, and comes from section 4.4.3, "Included
If Validating".

The first paragraph states that:

"When an XML processor recognizes a reference to a parsed entity, in
order to validate the document, the processor must include its
replacement text. If the entity is external, and the processor is not
attempting to validate the XML document, the processor may, but need
not, include the entity's replacement text. If a non-validating parser
does not include the replacement text, it must inform the application
that it recognized, but did not read, the entity."

	1) Obviously, the parser can tell if the entity is external if it has
previously been declared.  But what if it has't?  What should a
non-validating parser do?
	2) How does the parser "inform the application" via the SAX interface? 
Is this through the EntityResolver interface?

Thanks,
	-Shawn

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