Re: Clarify that documents with DOCTYPE but without markup declaration are not subject to validation

Paul Grosso, Wed, 05 Feb 2014 11:19:49 -0600:

> HTML5 can make its own rules about how a tool should process
> documents. Admittedly, if a tool is using an XML processor
> to process an HTML5 document, it should probably not use
> validation mode, but that is not something for the XML spec
> to address.

My motivation is clearly related to HTML5. But I don’t make no special 
plea for HTML5.

For instance, if one was to develop a official - or unofficial - DTD 
for HTML5 documents, it would make sense for XML tools to default to 
handle such documents the same way they handle other documents that 
associate a DTD via a document type declaration. Some other default 
behavior for such documents would certainly be possible, but 
counterproductive, to ask for.

However, today, when a document is "not valid", it typically triggers 
DTD-free forms of conformance check, such as XSD-based and other 
non-DTD-based conformance sevices. For such documents, ”not valid” is 
often viewed as synonymous with ”without DOCTYPE”. (Btw, ”DOCTYPE”, as 
a shorthand for ”document type declaration”, is not found in XML 1.0!)

For that reason it is quite important to maintain that it is *no hack* 
to realize that even documents *with* a doctypedecl construct are 
simply “not valid” and nothing more if the doctypedecl construct of the 
document contains or points to no DTD.

Further more, because HTML5 has become so important and because I would 
like to use XML tools on HTML5 documents problem free, it is also 
important to stress that notifying the user about broken validity 
constraints for documents that are simply ”not valid”, is not in line 
with how validation is prescribed to happen.

It is not the first time a document class has been defined without 
reference to DTD. But it might be the first time the (empty) mechanism 
for offering a DTD - the doctypedecl - has been prescribed by such a 
document class. And this is why it has become somewhat important not to 
change anything, but to point out the facts that I outlined above.

Thank you for your attention.
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Thursday, 6 February 2014 12:08:06 UTC