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As I've said before, I don't like _any_ of "subset", "profile" or "usage convention" -- if we decide to address the requirements in this area, I believe the right way to do it is with a new conformance class alongside the two already provided ('validating' and 'non-validating'). Call such a conformance class 'minimal' -- it can be trivially defined as a further restriction of 'non-validating', as follows (this is an edited copy of text from section 5.1 of XML 1.0 2e [1], changes in bold): **Minimal** processors are required to check only the document entity, including the entire internal DTD subset, for well-formedness, *except that they must not process any general or parameter entity declarations*. [Definition: While they are not required to check the document for validity, they are required to *minimally* process all the *non-entity* declarations they read in the internal DTD subset, up to the first reference to a parameter entity *[deleted]*; that is to say, they must use the information in those declarations to normalize attribute values *[deleted]*.] Except when standalone="yes", they must not process *[deleted]* attribute-list declarations encountered after a reference to a parameter entity *[deleted]*, since the entity may have contained overriding declarations. The crucial difference between such an approach and the 'profile' or 'subset' approach is that it doesn't change the fundamental universality of XML -- all conformant processors can process all XML documents. That minimal processors will 'produce' slightly different infosets from some inputs than non-validating processors is nothing new, it's already true that non-validating processors will 'produce' slightly different infosets from some inputs than validating processors. This approach does not address the question of processing instructions and comments -- like the TAG, I think applications existing freedom to ignore these is sufficient. ht [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#sec-conformance -- Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh Half-time member of W3C Team 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440 Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/ [mail really from me _always_ has this .sig -- mail without it is forged spam]Received on Wed Apr 2 04:05:11 2003
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