Re: [xsl] Another lookup problem (well-formed vs. valid)

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Chris,

At 03:48 PM 5/13/2003, you wrote:
> I'm thinking I could use document('....') to pull in the other data,
> and I could use <xsl:key> to access the data, but I'm concerned
> that the other data doesn't conform to the same DTD as the rest.

It shouldn't be a problem. Whether the data is any good is a separable 
question from whether it conforms to a particular (or any) DTD. :->

> I hope (not yet proven) that the other data source is at least well-
> formed -- my validating parser hasn't shown me any well-formedness
> errors. (By the way, this is off-topic, but does anybody happen to
> know how I can just call a non-validating parser to confirm that a
> document is well-formed? I have access to xalan/xerces and expat
> (nee nsgmls) -- probably some others but not immediately to hand)
> Will I be able to just call in the other document without worrying about
> its validity?

If it's truly well-formed, yes. (Again, you still might have to worry about 
the quality of the data.)

All XML parsers do wf-checking; most validating parsers have a switch to 
allow you to turn validation off. For tasks such as you're looking at, I 
like the RXP parser (google XML RXP parser), which is fast and conformant 
and runs from a command line, with various switches including this one. I 
know for sure that Xerces has such a switch: in its docs you want to look 
at "SAXCount" or some other mini-application.

> One more complication: the additional source document is in 27 pieces,
> so I was combining them using the internal subset on the DOCTYPE
> line, like so:
>
> <!DOCTYPE OPR PUBLIC "-//xxx/DTD xxx//" "Oro-v315.dtd" [
> <!ENTITY efa SYSTEM "./ef/xmlout/efa.xml">
> ...]
> >
> &efa;
> ...
>
> An old SGML trick which is still very handy, but here I'm concerned
> that I'm no longer in pure well-formedness once I've put that DOCTYPE
> line in there.

You're still well-formed: not to worry. (You're not "standalone" though.) 
This won't be an issue until you run into some tool that doesn't conform to 
the Rec in this respect.

Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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