docbook: DocBook XML HOWTOs in the LDP collection
Subject:
DocBook XML HOWTOs in the LDP collection
From:
Dan Scott ####@####.####
Date:
21 May 2001 23:16:32 -0000
Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0105211530030.1559-100000@denials.dyn.dhs.org>
Hmm, I decided to expand my DocBook XML processing with Xalan experiments
to include the other HOWTOs in the LDP collection that use DocBook XML
(the XML-RPC HOWTO and the JavaStation HOWTO).
It turns out that both of those HOWTOs are missing the system identifier;
that is, they both declare:
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN"
[ ... entities ... ]>
rather than:
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN"
"http://docbook.org/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd"
[ ... entities ... ]>
This causes the Xalan XSLT processor to die a quick death.
Fixing the documents to be XML-compliant isn't quite as easy as adding
the system identifier, though. The XML-RPC HOWTO appears to contain some
funky parameter entity stuff that Xalan again barfs on:
<!ENTITY % GoodStyleSheets "IGNORE">
<![%GoodStyleSheets;[
<!ENTITY legal.notice "
<legalnotice id='xmlrpc-howto-legal'>&license;</legalnotice>
">
<!ENTITY legal.section "">
]]>
(Xalan barfs on the second line, above. I'm not fluent enough in XML to
know the exact ins and outs of entity declarations within the DOCTYPE
declaration, so I'm not sure if that's a limitation of the tool or a
no-no in XML)
The JavaStation HOWTO, in turn declares an external entity that is
not included in its gzip archive:
<!ENTITY gfdl SYSTEM "gfdl.xml">
When it actually attempts to use this entity elsewhere in the document,
Xalan again dies (because I don't happen to have a copy of gfdl.xml
hanging around). This appears to be a case where the doc needs its own
directory in CVS so it can include multiple files, yes?
The reason I bring this up is because I was going to volunteer the LDP
set of DocBook XML docs as representative examples for a gentleman's
parser experiments on comp.text.xml, but thought I should test them out
first. I didn't end up volunteering our documents because only the
DB2-HOWTO works without any editing.
What this suggests to me is one or both of the following:
a. the Jade XML transform is a little too lenient, allowing SGML
syntax that shouldn't be allowed in XML
b. the Xalan XML transform is buggy, and doesn't allow some XML
syntax that does comply with the XML 1.0 specs
Anyone more knowledgeable out there care to speculate?
Dan
--
Dan Scott
