RE: [syndication] Incorrect RSS-1.0 example?

["Leigh Dodds" <ldodds@ingenta.com>]

The DOCTYPE and ENTITY example is fine.

I've just checked it in RXP [1].

A Validating XML parser will throw errors, because the elements 
used in the document are not declared in the DTD. In this case 
the DTD is this section:

<!DOCTYPE rdf:RDF[
...
]>

This is a separate issue to the use of entities. To confirm this 
with RXP, add the above to the top of an RSS 1.0 document 
(without the ... ) and do:

rxp -xVs myfile.rss

You'll see errors complaining about undeclared elements.

Add in the ENTITY declaration as shown in the spec, and you'll 
get the same result.

Now, if add an entity in that file, e.g. &nbsp; WITHOUT 
the ENTITY declaration, you'll get an additional error complaining 
abotu the undeclared entity. Add the ENTITY declaration and 
that one will go away.

If you do the same thing with a non-validating parser, then you 
won't get any errors about undeclared elements, because 
a non-validating parser won't bother to check. The majority of them 
do check for entity declarations, however. So if you did an entity 
you'll get an error WITHOUT the ENTITY declaration, but not WITH.

You can confirm this with:

rxp -x myfile.rss

So the short answer is: the entity declarations are perfectly legal 
XML. Errors will appear if you attempt to validate an RSS 1.0 
document, because it doesn't have a DTD. The guidance for 
aggregators is to therefore use a non-validating parser, and 
for authors to check the validity of the RSS 1.0 file in another 
way, e.g. using my validator [2].

Hope that helps,

L.

[1]. http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~richard/rxp.html
[2]. http://www.ldodds.com/rss_validator/1.0/validator.html

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Kearney [mailto:wkearney99@hotmail.com]
> Sent: 28 March 2002 19:00
> To: rss-dev; syndication
> Subject: [syndication] Incorrect RSS-1.0 example?
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm confused. The usage example listed in section 5.0 of the RSS-1.0 spec won't
> parse.
>     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-dev/files/specification.html
> 
> The use of that DOCTYPE and ENTITY text seems to confuse it.
> Why? Is this example not correct?
> 
> The MSXML parser being used by XML Notepad complains:
>     "The element 'rdf:RDF' is used but not declared in the DTD/Schema."
> 
> I'd like to get this cleared up. What's the proper header for a document
> expecting to use RDF and HTML entities?
> 
> This is pertinent to RSS-1.0 and to OCS formatted files.
> 
> Thanks,
> Bill Kearney
> 
>  
> 
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> 
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