Re: Why Doesn't IE5 use the DTD to Validate?

Subject: Re: Why Doesn't IE5 use the DTD to Validate?
From: "Jeff Greif" <jmg@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 09:49:59 -0800
I'm hesitant to enter this thread since I'm far from an expert, but...

The problem is that the browser is really a processing application, for
example, using XSL to transform or render the document (at least in
principle).  If the document is supposed to conform to a DTD, the XSL code
will be a lot simpler if it can assume it will find what it wants where it
expects it.  If it has to handle any well-formed doc, the error recovery
code will be fearsome.  In the example below, the XSL for processing the BAZ
element below may depend upon attribute values or text of the supposedly
preceding BAR element.  If the BAR element might not be present or might
follow the BAZ element, the XSL would need to be messier.

Jeff

----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Prescod <paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 1999 6:45 AM
Subject: Re: Why Doesn't IE5 use the DTD to Validate?


> Chris Lilley wrote:
> >
> > So, it always validates, but the flag controls whether error messages
> > are shown? That sounds fine, until you realise that if a validating
> > parser founfd an error then not only do you have error messages, you
> > also have no parse tree. So, what gets displayed? Presumably, some
> > fixed-up, error-corrected tree.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean here. Consider:
>
> <!ELEMENT FOO (BAR, BAZ)>
>
> ...
>
> <FOO><BAZ/><BAR/></FOO>
>
> The tree does not conform to the DTD but it is not ambiguous. In the face
> of errors IE5 should give you exactly the same parse tree that a
> well-formed only parser gives you.
>



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