This section only describes the rules for XML
resources. Rules for text/html resources are discussed
in the section above entitled "The HTML syntax".
The syntax for using HTML with XML, whether in XHTML documents or embedded in other XML documents, is defined in the XML and Namespaces in XML specifications. [XML] [XMLNS]
This specification does not define any syntax-level requirements beyond those defined for XML proper.
XML documents may contain a DOCTYPE if desired, but
this is not required to conform to this specification. This
specification does not define a public or system identifier, nor
provide a format DTD.
According to the XML specification, XML processors
are not guaranteed to process the external DTD subset referenced in
the DOCTYPE. This means, for example, that using entity references
for characters in XHTML documents is unsafe if they are defined in
an external file (except for <, >, &, " and ').