To:
ietf-provreg@cafax.se
From:
Joe Abley <jabley@isc.org>
Date:
Tue, 3 Dec 2002 05:23:14 -0500
Sender:
owner-ietf-provreg@cafax.se
Subject:
<!DOCTYPE> declaration
My reading of the W3C XML spec seems to suggest that all the request and response documents in the current drafts are well-formed, but none of them are valid (in the XML sense) since none of them include a <!DOCTYPE> declaration as their first element. My experience with XML parsers is somewhat light, but it seems reasonable to me that a valid document is more likely to play nicely with a validating parser than an invalid document. Seems to me like there might be an argument for requiring that request and response documents MUST be valid (and hence include a <!DOCTYPE> element). Alternatively, it could be specified that clients and servers MUST accept a <!DOCTYPE> element if it's present. In any case, I think some mention needs to be made of <!DOCTYPE> declarations, unless I am suffering delusions about what the standalone="no" attribute means in the <?xml> decl. Joe