Chris Lilley wrote:
The text/xml MIME type isn't limited to well-formed documents, but
rather
to XML entities (c.f. 2nd para under 3. XML Media Types of
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-murata-xml-01.txt); so the
following:
Four score and seven years ago
is a valid text/xml body, but an XML processor will burp cuz there's
no root element.
This is s agood point, which had escaped my notice before. Certainly, it
should be a requirement that text/xml (or the preferred application/xml,
which avoids silly crufty rules about charsets) is always a well formed
XML instance, and things thatare now well formed XML use a different
type.
In XML 1.0, an XML document can also become an external parsed entity.
For example, consider an XML document as below:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<test/>
This can be used as an external parsed entity from another
document as blow:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE doc [
<!ENTITY parsedentity SYSTEM "http://hoge";>
]>
<doc>&parsedentity;</doc>
which is equivalent to <doc><test/></doc>.
In order to allow such an XML document, we have to use text/xml or
application/xml
for external parsed entities.
Dan Connolly wrote:
Four score and seven years ago
is a valid text/xml body, but an XML processor will burp cuz there's
no root element.
Yes. It must report a fatal error. Even if we disallowed the use of text/xml
or application/xml for parsed entities, the world would not be free from
incorrect
documents and fatal errors.
Cheers,
Makoto
Fuji Xerox Information Systems
Tel: +81-44-812-7230 Fax: +81-44-812-7231
E-mail: murata(_dot_)makoto(_at_)fujixerox(_dot_)co(_dot_)jp