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Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] What is Xml ?


Hi Richard,

> Please can someone direct me to an authoritative explanation of what
constitutes a valid XML file ?

Let me try with expert knowledge freshly gained from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML#Well-formedness_and_error-handling).

For your below document, this means:

* The <?xml?> prolog is optional.
* There's no single "root" element that contains all the other elements. Therefore, the XML isn't well-formed, and thus not valid.

HTH.

Cheers,

Stefan

I've been provided with some "XML" files which are a bit like this :
<?xml?>
<category id="information">
  <section id="general">
   <element id="fileinfo" />
  </section>
</category>
<category id="device">
  <section id="Status">
   <element id="1" />
   <element id="2" />
  </section>
</category>
They are described as "XML", together with a note that "... file can be
created using any XML editor providing the format and tags required are
used", though I get various errors from emacs+nxml-mode, XmlMind and Serna.
I think that they are not well-formed, on account of having two "root
nodes".
I'm also a bit surprised by the lack of the usual version, encoding and
standalone attributes in the xml PI, though I suspect they are actually
optional.
And I've just found that it starts with (hex) ef bb bf, before the "<?"
- is that a byte-order mark ?  Or just another non-standardness ?
I will need to pass this back to the originators so that they can either :
1.  Change their software to produce/use real XML.
or:
2.  Change their documentation to refer to "XML-like" or similar.
In the meantime I'll need to do some sort of processing to get it into a
form that I can process.
Appreciatively,
Richard.
Blue line

*Richard Kerry*

BNCS Engineer

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--
Cheers,

Stefan Hinz <stefan.hinz@oracle.com>, MySQL Documentation Manager

Phone: +49-30-82702940, Fax: +49-30-82702941, http://dev.mysql.com/doc

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