Re: [Classpathx-xml] tests

[David Brownell]

On Tuesday 03 August 2004 20:15, Musachy Barroso wrote:
> Some of this SAX tests are driving me crazy..like this one, on this input:
> 
> <?xml version='1.0' standalone='yes'?>
>     <!DOCTYPE attributes SYSTEM "../valid/sa.dtd" [
>         <!--
>           attribute needs defaulting

... and since it needs defaulting, clearly "standalone = yes" is wrong
and the document is invalid.

>          -->
>     ]>
> <attributes/>
> <?pi equals three?>
> 

In this case, since it needed to default to <attributes token='a'/>,
clearly omitting the DTD would change the output and so the
document would no longer be standalone:  parser output would
NOT BE THE SAME when omitting the DTD's external subset.


> the SAX test is expecting the parser to accept the xml file(!?), the
> header of the test reads: " Tests the Standalone Document Declaration
> VC, ensuring that attributes needing defaulting cause a validity
> error."

Accept it, sure.  Accept it as valid, no ... it's invalid according to the
original intent of the XML specification.  Were you validating?
Reading the external subset of that DTD?

The problem is that the "standalone" declaration was always very
poorly defined ... and the behavior of attribute defaulting with respect
to that declaration was _very badly_ defined.

And to top it off, the first several errata to that part of the XML spec just 
added more ambiguity there.  The W3C folk first tasked with resolving
such things were dodging that issue pretty seriously, when they weren't
ignoring it ... I remember it took over a year to get them to even respond
to that one, at which point their alleged "response" was off topic.

I got the impression that vendor politics were behind a lot of that
early mess, though that over-a-year delay was maybe more because
they didn't want to revise XML 1.0 that soon after releasing it.  And the
XML conformance test process sure acted for a while like it was being
used as a vehicle to "bless Xerces" rather than actually resolve the
spec bugs that turned up ... not just those for "standalone".

- Dave