Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Second Edition)
W3C Recommendation 6 October 2000
This version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xml-20001006 (XHTML, XML, PDF, XHTML review
version with color-coded revision indicators)
Latest version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml
Previous versions:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/WD-xml-2e-20000814
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210
Editors:
Tim Bray, Textuality and Netscape
Jean Paoli, Microsoft
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, University of Illinois at Chicago and Text Encoding
Initiative
Eve Maler, Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Second Edition
Copyright © 2000 W3C® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability,
trademark, document use, and software licensing rules apply.
Abstract
The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a subset of SGML that is completely
described in this document. Its goal is to enable generic SGML to be served,
received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML.
XML has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability with
both SGML and HTML.
Status of this Document
This document has been reviewed by W3C Members and other interested parties and
has been endorsed by the Director as a W3C Recommendation. It is a stable
document and may be used as reference material or cited as a normative reference
from another document. W3C's role in making the Recommendation is to draw
attention to the specification and to promote its widespread deployment. This
enhances the functionality and interoperability of the Web.
This document specifies a syntax created by subsetting an existing, widely used
international text processing standard (Standard Generalized Markup Language,
ISO 8879:1986(E) as amended and corrected) for use on the World Wide Web. It is
a product of the W3C XML Activity, details of which can be found at
http://www.w3.org/XML. The English version of this specification is the only
normative version. However, for translations of this document, see
http://www.w3.org/XML/#trans. A list of current W3C Recommendations and other
technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR.
This second edition is not a new version of XML (first published 10 February
1998); it merely incorporates the changes dictated by the first-edition errata
(available at http://www.w3.org/XML/xml-19980210-errata) as a convenience to
readers. The errata list for this second edition is available at
http://www.w3.org/XML/xml-V10-2e-errata.
Please report errors in this document to xml-editor@w3.org; archives are
available.
Note:
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen's affiliation has changed since the publication of the
first edition. He is now at the World Wide Web Consortium, and can be contacted
at cmsmcq@w3.org.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Origin and Goals
1.2 Terminology
2 Documents
2.1 Well-Formed XML Documents
2.2 Characters
2.3 Common Syntactic Constructs
2.4 Character Data and Markup
2.5 Comments
2.6 Processing Instructions
2.7 CDATA Sections
2.8 Prolog and Document Type Declaration
2.9 Standalone Document Declaration
2.10 White Space Handling
2.11 End-of-Line Handling
2.12 Language Identification
3 Logical Structures
3.1 Start-Tags, End-Tags, and Empty-Element Tags
3.2 Element Type Declarations
3.2.1 Element Content
3.2.2 Mixed Content
3.3 Attribute-List Declarations
3.3.1 Attribute Types
3.3.2 Attribute Defaults
3.3.3 Attribute-Value Normalization
3.4 Conditional Sections
4 Physical Structures
4.1 Character and Entity References
4.2 Entity Declarations
4.2.1 Internal Entities
4.2.2 External Entities
4.3 Parsed Entities
4.3.1 The Text Declaration
4.3.2 Well-Formed Parsed Entities
4.3.3 Character Encoding in Entities
4.4 XML Processor Treatment of Entities and References
4.4.1 Not Recognized
4.4.2 Included
4.4.3 Included If Validating
4.4.4 Forbidden
4.4.5 Included in Literal
4.4.6 Notify
4.4.7 Bypassed
4.4.8 Included as PE
4.5 Construction of Internal Entity Replacement Text
4.6 Predefined Entities
4.7 Notation Declarations
4.8 Document Entity
5 Conformance
5.1 Validating and Non-Validating Processors
5.2 Using XML Processors
6 Notation
Appendices
A References
A.1 Normative References
A.2 Other References
B Character Classes
C XML and SGML (Non-Normative)
D Expansion of Entity and Character References (Non-Normative)
E Deterministic Content Models (Non-Normative)
F Autodetection of Character Encodings (Non-Normative)
F.1 Detection Without External Encoding Information
F.2 Priorities in the Presence of External Encoding Information
G W3C XML Working Group (Non-Normative)
H W3C XML Core Group (Non-Normative)
I Production Notes (Non-Normative)
1 Introduction
Extensible Markup Language, abbreviated XML, describes a class of data objects
called XML documents and partially describes the behavior of computer programs
which process them. XML is an application profile or restricted form of SGML,
the Standard Generalized Markup Language [ISO 8879]. By construction, XML
documents are conforming SGML documents.
XML documents are made up of storage units called entities, which contain either
parsed or unparsed data. Parsed data is made up of characters, some of which
form character data, and some of which form markup. Markup encodes a description
of the document's storage layout and logical structure. XML provides a mechanism
to impose constraints on the storage layout and logical structure.
[Definition: A software module called an XML processor is used to read XML
documents and provide access to their content and structure.] [Definition: It is
assumed that an XML processor is doing its work on behalf of another module,
called the application.] This specification describes the required behavior of
an XML processor in terms of how it must read XML data and the information it
must provide to the application.
1.1 Origin and Goals
XML was developed by an XML Working Group (originally known as the SGML
Editorial Review Board) formed under the auspices of the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) in 1996. It was chaired by Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems with
the active participation of an XML Special Interest Group (previously known as
the SGML Working Group) also organized by the W3C. The membership of the XML
Working Group is given in an appendix. Dan Connolly served as the WG's contact
with the W3C.
The design goals for XML are:
XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet.
XML shall support a wide variety of applications.
XML shall be compatible with SGML.
It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents.
The number of optional features in XML is to be kept to the absolute
minimum, ideally zero.
XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear.
The XML design should be prepared quickly.
The design of XML shall be formal and concise.
XML documents shall be easy to create.
Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance.
This specification, together with associated standards (Unicode and ISO/IEC
10646 for characters, Internet RFC 1766 for language identification tags, ISO
639 for language name codes, and ISO 3166 for country name codes), provides all
the information necessary to understand XML Version 1.0 and construct computer
programs to process it.
This version of the XML specification may be distributed freely, as long as all
text and legal notices remain intact.
1.2 Terminology
The terminology used to describe XML documents is defined in the body of this
specification. The terms defined in the following list are used in building
those definitions and in describing the actions of an XML processor:
may
[Definition: Conforming documents and XML processors are permitted to but
need not behave as described.]
must
[Definition: Conforming documents and XML processors are required to behave
as described; otherwise they are in error. ]
error
[Definition: A violation of the rules of this specification; results are
undefined. Conforming software may detect and report an error and may
recover from it.]
fatal error
[Definition: An error which a conforming XML processor must detect and
report to the application. After encountering a fatal error, the processor
may continue processing the data to search for further errors and may report
such errors to the application. In order to support correction of errors,
the processor may make unprocessed data from the document (with intermingled
character data and markup) available to the application. Once a fatal error
is detected, however, the processor must not continue normal processing
(i.e., it must not continue to pass character data and information about the
document's logical structure to the application in the normal way).]
at user option
[Definition: Conforming software may or must (depending on the modal verb in
the sentence) behave as described; if it does, it must provide users a means
to enable or disable the behavior described.]
validity constraint
[Definition: A rule which applies to all valid XML documents. Violations of
validity constraints are errors; they must, at user option, be reported by
validating XML processors.]
well-formedness constraint
[Definition: A rule which applies to all well-formed XML documents.
Violations of well-formedness constraints are fatal errors.]
match
[Definition: (Of strings or names:) Two strings or names being compared must
be identical. Characters with multiple possible representations in ISO/IEC
10646 (e.g. characters with both precomposed and base+diacritic forms) match
only if they have the same representation in both strings. No case folding
is performed. (Of strings and rules in the grammar:) A string matches a
grammatical production if it belongs to the language generated by that
production. (Of content and content models:) An element matches its
declaration when it conforms in the fashion described in the constraint [VC:
Element Valid].]
for compatibility
[Definition: Marks a sentence describing a feature of XML included solely to
ensure that XML remains compatible with SGML.]
for interoperability
[Definition: Marks a sentence describing a non-binding recommendation
included to increase the chances that XML documents can be processed by the
existing installed base of SGML processors which predate the WebSGML
Adaptations Annex to ISO 8879.]
2 Documents
[Definition: A data object is an XML document if it is well-formed, as defined
in this specification. A well-formed XML document may in addition be valid if it
meets certain further constraints.]
Each XML document has both a logical and a physical structure. Physically, the
document is composed of units called entities. An entity may refer to other
entities to cause their inclusion in the document. A document begins in a "root"
or document entity. Logically, the document is composed of declarations,
elements, comments, character references, and processing instructions, all of
which are indicated in the document by explicit markup. The logical and physical
structures must nest properly, as described in 4.3.2 Well-Formed Parsed
Entities.
2.1 Well-Formed XML Documents
[Definition: A textual object is a well-formed XML document if:]
Taken as a whole, it matches the production labeled document.
It meets all the well-formedness constraints given in this specification.
Each of the parsed entities which is referenced directly or indirectly
within the document is well-formed.
Document
[1] document ::= prolog element Misc*
Matching the document production implies that:
It contains one or more elements.
[Definition: There is exactly one element, called the root, or document
element, no part of which appears in the content of any other element.] For
all other elements, if the start-tag is in the content of another element,
the end-tag is in the content of the same element. More simply stated, the
elements, delimited by start- and end-tags, nest properly within each other.
[Definition: As a consequence of this, for each non-root element C in the
document, there is one other element P in the document such that C is in the
content of P, but is not in the content of any other element that is in the
content of P. P is referred to as the parent of C, and C as a child of P.]
2.2 Characters
[Definition: A parsed entity contains text, a sequence of characters, which may
represent markup or character data.] [Definition: A character is an atomic unit
of text as specified by ISO/IEC 10646 [ISO/IEC 10646] (see also [ISO/IEC
10646-2000]). Legal characters are tab, carriage return, line feed, and the
legal characters of Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646. The versions of these standards
cited in A.1 Normative References were current at the time this document was
prepared. New characters may be added to these standards by amendments or new
editions. Consequently, XML processors must accept any character in the range
specified for Char. The use of "compatibility characters", as defined in section
6.8 of [Unicode] (see also D21 in section 3.6 of [Unicode3]), is discouraged.]
Character Range
[2] Char ::= #x9 | #xA | #xD | [#x20-#xD7FF] | [#xE000-#xFFFD]
| [#x10000-#x10FFFF]/* any Unicode character, excluding the
surrogate blocks, FFFE, and FFFF. */
The mechanism for encoding character code points into bit patterns may vary from
entity to entity. All XML processors must accept the UTF-8 and UTF-16 encodings
of 10646; the mechanisms for signaling which of the two is in use, or for
bringing other encodings into play, are discussed later, in 4.3.3 Character
Encoding in Entities.
2.3 Common Syntactic Constructs
This section defines some symbols used widely in the grammar.
S (white space) consists of one or more space (#x20) characters, carriage
returns, line feeds, or tabs.
White Space
[3] S ::= (#x20 | #x9 | #xD | #xA)+
Characters are classified for convenience as letters, digits, or other
characters. A letter consists of an alphabetic or syllabic base character or an
ideographic character. Full definitions of the specific characters in each class
are given in B Character Classes.
[Definition: A Name is a token beginning with a letter or one of a few
punctuation characters, and continuing with letters, digits, hyphens,
underscores, colons, or full stops, together known as name characters.] Names
beginning with the string "xml", or any string which would match (('X'|'x')
('M'|'m') ('L'|'l')), are reserved for standardization in this or future
versions of this specification.
Note:
The Namespaces in XML Recommendation [XML Names] assigns a meaning to names
containing colon characters. Therefore, authors should not use the colon in XML
names except for namespace purposes, but XML processors must accept the colon as
a name character.
An Nmtoken (name token) is any mixture of name characters.
Names and Tokens
[4] NameChar ::= Letter | Digit | '.' | '-' | '_' | ':' |
CombiningChar | Extender
[5] Name ::= (Letter | '_' | ':') (NameChar)*
[6] Names ::= Name (S Name)*
[7] Nmtoken ::= (NameChar)+
[8] Nmtokens ::= Nmtoken (S Nmtoken)*
Literal data is any quoted string not containing the quotation mark used as a
delimiter for that string. Literals are used for specifying the content of
internal entities (EntityValue), the values of attributes (AttValue), and
external identifiers (SystemLiteral). Note that a SystemLiteral can be parsed
without scanning for markup.
Literals
[9] EntityValue ::= '"' ([^%&"] | PEReference | Reference)*
'"'
| "'" ([^%&'] | PEReference | Reference)* "'"
[10] AttValue ::= '"' ([^<&"] | Reference)* '"'
| "'" ([^<&'] | Reference)* "'"
[11] SystemLiteral ::= ('"' [^"]* '"') | ("'" [^']* "'")
[12] PubidLiteral ::= '"' PubidChar* '"' | "'" (PubidChar -
"'")* "'"
[13] PubidChar ::= #x20 | #xD | #xA | [a-zA-Z0-9] |
[-'()+,./:=?;!*#@$_%]
Note:
Although the EntityValue production allows the definition of an entity
consisting of a single explicit < in the literal (e.g., ), it
is strongly advised to avoid this practice since any reference to that entity
will cause a well-formedness error.
2.4 Character Data and Markup
Text consists of intermingled character data and markup. [Definition: Markup
takes the form of start-tags, end-tags, empty-element tags, entity references,
character references, comments, CDATA section delimiters, document type
declarations, processing instructions, XML declarations, text declarations, and
any white space that is at the top level of the document entity (that is,
outside the document element and not inside any other markup).]
[Definition: All text that is not markup constitutes the character data of the
document.]
The ampersand character (&) and the left angle bracket (<) may appear in their
literal form only when used as markup delimiters, or within a comment, a
processing instruction, or a CDATA section. If they are needed elsewhere, they
must be escaped using either numeric character references or the strings "&"
and "<" respectively. The right angle bracket (>) may be represented using
the string ">", and must, for compatibility, be escaped using ">" or a
character reference when it appears in the string "]]>" in content, when that
string is not marking the end of a CDATA section.
In the content of elements, character data is any string of characters which
does not contain the start-delimiter of any markup. In a CDATA section,
character data is any string of characters not including the CDATA-section-close
delimiter, "]]>".
To allow attribute values to contain both single and double quotes, the
apostrophe or single-quote character (') may be represented as "'", and the
double-quote character (") as """.
Character Data
[14] CharData ::= [^<&]* - ([^<&]* ']]>' [^<&]*)
2.5 Comments
[Definition: Comments may appear anywhere in a document outside other markup; in
addition, they may appear within the document type declaration at places allowed
by the grammar. They are not part of the document's character data; an XML
processor may, but need not, make it possible for an application to retrieve the
text of comments. For compatibility, the string "--" (double-hyphen) must not
occur within comments.] Parameter entity references are not recognized within
comments.
Comments
[15] Comment ::= ''
An example of a comment:
Note that the grammar does not allow a comment ending in --->. The following
example is not well-formed.
2.6 Processing Instructions
[Definition: Processing instructions (PIs) allow documents to contain
instructions for applications.]
Processing Instructions
[16] PI ::= '' PITarget (S (Char* - (Char* '?>' Char*)))?
'?>'
[17] PITarget ::= Name - (('X' | 'x') ('M' | 'm') ('L' | 'l'))
PIs are not part of the document's character data, but must be passed through to
the application. The PI begins with a target (PITarget) used to identify the
application to which the instruction is directed. The target names "XML", "xml",
and so on are reserved for standardization in this or future versions of this
specification. The XML Notation mechanism may be used for formal declaration of
PI targets. Parameter entity references are not recognized within processing
instructions.
2.7 CDATA Sections
[Definition: CDATA sections may occur anywhere character data may occur; they
are used to escape blocks of text containing characters which would otherwise be
recognized as markup. CDATA sections begin with the string "":]
CDATA Sections
[18] CDSect ::= CDStart CData CDEnd
[19] CDStart ::= '' Char*))
[21] CDEnd ::= ']]>'
Within a CDATA section, only the CDEnd string is recognized as markup, so that
left angle brackets and ampersands may occur in their literal form; they need
not (and cannot) be escaped using "<" and "&". CDATA sections cannot
nest.
An example of a CDATA section, in which "" and "" are
recognized as character data, not markup:
Hello, world!]]>
2.8 Prolog and Document Type Declaration
[Definition: XML documents should begin with an XML declaration which specifies
the version of XML being used.] For example, the following is a complete XML
document, well-formed but not valid:
Hello, world!
and so is this:
Hello, world!
The version number "1.0" should be used to indicate conformance to this version
of this specification; it is an error for a document to use the value "1.0" if
it does not conform to this version of this specification. It is the intent of
the XML working group to give later versions of this specification numbers other
than "1.0", but this intent does not indicate a commitment to produce any future
versions of XML, nor if any are produced, to use any particular numbering
scheme. Since future versions are not ruled out, this construct is provided as a
means to allow the possibility of automatic version recognition, should it
become necessary. Processors may signal an error if they receive documents
labeled with versions they do not support.
The function of the markup in an XML document is to describe its storage and
logical structure and to associate attribute-value pairs with its logical
structures. XML provides a mechanism, the document type declaration, to define
constraints on the logical structure and to support the use of predefined
storage units. [Definition: An XML document is valid if it has an associated
document type declaration and if the document complies with the constraints
expressed in it.]
The document type declaration must appear before the first element in the
document.
Prolog
[22] prolog ::= XMLDecl? Misc* (doctypedecl Misc*)?
[23] XMLDecl ::= ''
[24] VersionInfo ::= S 'version' Eq ("'" VersionNum "'" | '"'
VersionNum '"')/* */
[25] Eq ::= S? '=' S?
[26] VersionNum ::= ([a-zA-Z0-9_.:] | '-')+
[27] Misc ::= Comment | PI | S
[Definition: The XML document type declaration contains or points to markup
declarations that provide a grammar for a class of documents. This grammar is
known as a document type definition, or DTD. The document type declaration can
point to an external subset (a special kind of external entity) containing
markup declarations, or can contain the markup declarations directly in an
internal subset, or can do both. The DTD for a document consists of both subsets
taken together.]
[Definition: A markup declaration is an element type declaration, an
attribute-list declaration, an entity declaration, or a notation declaration.]
These declarations may be contained in whole or in part within parameter
entities, as described in the well-formedness and validity constraints below.
For further information, see 4 Physical Structures.
Document Type Definition
[28] doctypedecl ::= ''[VC: Root Element Type]
[WFC: External Subset]
/* */
[28a] DeclSep ::= PEReference | S[WFC: PE Between
Declarations]
/* */
[29] markupdecl ::= elementdecl | AttlistDecl | EntityDecl |
NotationDecl | PI | Comment [VC: Proper Declaration/PE Nesting]
[WFC: PEs in Internal Subset]
Note that it is possible to construct a well-formed document containing a
doctypedecl that neither points to an external subset nor contains an internal
subset.
The markup declarations may be made up in whole or in part of the replacement
text of parameter entities. The productions later in this specification for
individual nonterminals (elementdecl, AttlistDecl, and so on) describe the
declarations after all the parameter entities have been included.
Parameter entity references are recognized anywhere in the DTD (internal and
external subsets and external parameter entities), except in literals,
processing instructions, comments, and the contents of ignored conditional
sections (see 3.4 Conditional Sections). They are also recognized in entity
value literals. The use of parameter entities in the internal subset is
restricted as described below.
Validity constraint: Root Element Type
The Name in the document type declaration must match the element type of the
root element.
Validity constraint: Proper Declaration/PE Nesting
Parameter-entity replacement text must be properly nested with markup
declarations. That is to say, if either the first character or the last
character of a markup declaration (markupdecl above) is contained in the
replacement text for a parameter-entity reference, both must be contained in the
same replacement text.
Well-formedness constraint: PEs in Internal Subset
In the internal DTD subset, parameter-entity references can occur only where
markup declarations can occur, not within markup declarations. (This does not
apply to references that occur in external parameter entities or to the external
subset.)
Well-formedness constraint: External Subset
The external subset, if any, must match the production for extSubset.
Well-formedness constraint: PE Between Declarations
The replacement text of a parameter entity reference in a DeclSep must match the
production extSubsetDecl.
Like the internal subset, the external subset and any external parameter
entities referenced in a DeclSep must consist of a series of complete markup
declarations of the types allowed by the non-terminal symbol markupdecl,
interspersed with white space or parameter-entity references. However, portions
of the contents of the external subset or of these external parameter entities
may conditionally be ignored by using the conditional section construct; this is
not allowed in the internal subset.
External Subset
[30] extSubset ::= TextDecl? extSubsetDecl
[31] extSubsetDecl ::= ( markupdecl | conditionalSect |
DeclSep)*/* */
The external subset and external parameter entities also differ from the
internal subset in that in them, parameter-entity references are permitted
within markup declarations, not only between markup declarations.
An example of an XML document with a document type declaration:
Hello, world!
The system identifier "hello.dtd" gives the address (a URI reference) of a DTD
for the document.
The declarations can also be given locally, as in this example:
]>
Hello, world!
If both the external and internal subsets are used, the internal subset is
considered to occur before the external subset. This has the effect that entity
and attribute-list declarations in the internal subset take precedence over
those in the external subset.
2.9 Standalone Document Declaration
Markup declarations can affect the content of the document, as passed from an
XML processor to an application; examples are attribute defaults and entity
declarations. The standalone document declaration, which may appear as a
component of the XML declaration, signals whether or not there are such
declarations which appear external to the document entity or in parameter
entities. [Definition: An external markup declaration is defined as a markup
declaration occurring in the external subset or in a parameter entity (external
or internal, the latter being included because non-validating processors are not
required to read them).]
Standalone Document Declaration
[32] SDDecl ::= S 'standalone' Eq (("'" ('yes' | 'no') "'") |
('"' ('yes' | 'no') '"')) [VC: Standalone Document Declaration]
In a standalone document declaration, the value "yes" indicates that there are
no external markup declarations which affect the information passed from the XML
processor to the application. The value "no" indicates that there are or may be
such external markup declarations. Note that the standalone document declaration
only denotes the presence of external declarations; the presence, in a document,
of references to external entities, when those entities are internally declared,
does not change its standalone status.
If there are no external markup declarations, the standalone document
declaration has no meaning. If there are external markup declarations but there
is no standalone document declaration, the value "no" is assumed.
Any XML document for which standalone="no" holds can be converted
algorithmically to a standalone document, which may be desirable for some
network delivery applications.
Validity constraint: Standalone Document Declaration
The standalone document declaration must have the value "no" if any external
markup declarations contain declarations of:
attributes with default values, if elements to which these attributes apply
appear in the document without specifications of values for these
attributes, or
entities (other than amp, lt, gt, apos, quot), if references to those
entities appear in the document, or
attributes with values subject to normalization, where the attribute appears
in the document with a value which will change as a result of normalization,
or
element types with element content, if white space occurs directly within
any instance of those types.
An example XML declaration with a standalone document declaration:
2.10 White Space Handling
In editing XML documents, it is often convenient to use "white space" (spaces,
tabs, and blank lines) to set apart the markup for greater readability. Such
white space is typically not intended for inclusion in the delivered version of
the document. On the other hand, "significant" white space that should be
preserved in the delivered version is common, for example in poetry and source
code.
An XML processor must always pass all characters in a document that are not
markup through to the application. A validating XML processor must also inform
the application which of these characters constitute white space appearing in
element content.
A special attribute named xml:space may be attached to an element to signal an
intention that in that element, white space should be preserved by applications.
In valid documents, this attribute, like any other, must be declared if it is
used. When declared, it must be given as an enumerated type whose values are one
or both of "default" and "preserve". For example:
The value "default" signals that applications' default white-space processing
modes are acceptable for this element; the value "preserve" indicates the intent
that applications preserve all the white space. This declared intent is
considered to apply to all elements within the content of the element where it
is specified, unless overriden with another instance of the xml:space attribute.
The root element of any document is considered to have signaled no intentions as
regards application space handling, unless it provides a value for this
attribute or the attribute is declared with a default value.
2.11 End-of-Line Handling
XML parsed entities are often stored in computer files which, for editing
convenience, are organized into lines. These lines are typically separated by
some combination of the characters carriage-return (#xD) and line-feed (#xA).
To simplify the tasks of applications, the characters passed to an application
by the XML processor must be as if the XML processor normalized all line breaks
in external parsed entities (including the document entity) on input, before
parsing, by translating both the two-character sequence #xD #xA and any #xD that
is not followed by #xA to a single #xA character.
2.12 Language Identification
In document processing, it is often useful to identify the natural or formal
language in which the content is written. A special attribute named xml:lang may
be inserted in documents to specify the language used in the contents and
attribute values of any element in an XML document. In valid documents, this
attribute, like any other, must be declared if it is used. The values of the
attribute are language identifiers as defined by [IETF RFC 1766], Tags for the
Identification of Languages, or its successor on the IETF Standards Track.
Note:
[IETF RFC 1766] tags are constructed from two-letter language codes as defined
by [ISO 639], from two-letter country codes as defined by [ISO 3166], or from
language identifiers registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
[IANA-LANGCODES]. It is expected that the successor to [IETF RFC 1766] will
introduce three-letter language codes for languages not presently covered by
[ISO 639].
(Productions 33 through 38 have been removed.)
For example:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
What colour is it?
What color is it?
Habe nun, ach! Philosophie,
Juristerei, und Medizin
und leider auch Theologie
durchaus studiert mit heißem Bemüh'n.
The intent declared with xml:lang is considered to apply to all attributes and
content of the element where it is specified, unless overridden with an instance
of xml:lang on another element within that content.
A simple declaration for xml:lang might take the form
xml:lang NMTOKEN #IMPLIED
but specific default values may also be given, if appropriate. In a collection
of French poems for English students, with glosses and notes in English, the
xml:lang attribute might be declared this way:
3 Logical Structures
[Definition: Each XML document contains one or more elements, the boundaries of
which are either delimited by start-tags and end-tags, or, for empty elements,
by an empty-element tag. Each element has a type, identified by name, sometimes
called its "generic identifier" (GI), and may have a set of attribute
specifications.] Each attribute specification has a name and a value.
Element
[39] element ::= EmptyElemTag
| STag content ETag[WFC: Element Type Match]
[VC: Element Valid]
This specification does not constrain the semantics, use, or (beyond syntax)
names of the element types and attributes, except that names beginning with a
match to (('X'|'x')('M'|'m')('L'|'l')) are reserved for standardization in this
or future versions of this specification.
Well-formedness constraint: Element Type Match
The Name in an element's end-tag must match the element type in the start-tag.
Validity constraint: Element Valid
An element is valid if there is a declaration matching elementdecl where the
Name matches the element type, and one of the following holds:
The declaration matches EMPTY and the element has no content.
The declaration matches children and the sequence of child elements belongs
to the language generated by the regular expression in the content model,
with optional white space (characters matching the nonterminal S) between
the start-tag and the first child element, between child elements, or
between the last child element and the end-tag. Note that a CDATA section
containing only white space does not match the nonterminal S, and hence
cannot appear in these positions.
The declaration matches Mixed and the content consists of character data and
child elements whose types match names in the content model.
The declaration matches ANY, and the types of any child elements have been
declared.
3.1 Start-Tags, End-Tags, and Empty-Element Tags
[Definition: The beginning of every non-empty XML element is marked by a
start-tag.]
Start-tag
[40] STag ::= '<' Name (S Attribute)* S? '>'[WFC: Unique Att
Spec]
[41] Attribute ::= Name Eq AttValue[VC: Attribute Value Type]
[WFC: No External Entity References]
[WFC: No < in Attribute Values]
The Name in the start- and end-tags gives the element's type. [Definition: The
Name-AttValue pairs are referred to as the attribute specifications of the
element], [Definition: with the Name in each pair referred to as the attribute
name] and [Definition: the content of the AttValue (the text between the ' or "
delimiters) as the attribute value.]Note that the order of attribute
specifications in a start-tag or empty-element tag is not significant.
Well-formedness constraint: Unique Att Spec
No attribute name may appear more than once in the same start-tag or
empty-element tag.
Validity constraint: Attribute Value Type
The attribute must have been declared; the value must be of the type declared
for it. (For attribute types, see 3.3 Attribute-List Declarations.)
Well-formedness constraint: No External Entity References
Attribute values cannot contain direct or indirect entity references to external
entities.
Well-formedness constraint: No < in Attribute Values
The replacement text of any entity referred to directly or indirectly in an
attribute value must not contain a <.
An example of a start-tag:
[Definition: The end of every element that begins with a start-tag must be
marked by an end-tag containing a name that echoes the element's type as given
in the start-tag:]
End-tag
[42] ETag ::= '' Name S? '>'
An example of an end-tag:
[Definition: The text between the start-tag and end-tag is called the element's
content:]
Content of Elements
[43] content ::= CharData? ((element | Reference | CDSect | PI
| Comment) CharData?)*/* */
[Definition: An element with no content is said to be empty.] The representation
of an empty element is either a start-tag immediately followed by an end-tag, or
an empty-element tag. [Definition: An empty-element tag takes a special form:]
Tags for Empty Elements
[44] EmptyElemTag ::= '<' Name (S Attribute)* S? '/>'[WFC:
Unique Att Spec]
Empty-element tags may be used for any element which has no content, whether or
not it is declared using the keyword EMPTY. For interoperability, the
empty-element tag should be used, and should only be used, for elements which
are declared EMPTY.
Examples of empty elements:
3.2 Element Type Declarations
The element structure of an XML document may, for validation purposes, be
constrained using element type and attribute-list declarations. An element type
declaration constrains the element's content.
Element type declarations often constrain which element types can appear as
children of the element. At user option, an XML processor may issue a warning
when a declaration mentions an element type for which no declaration is
provided, but this is not an error.
[Definition: An element type declaration takes the form:]
Element Type Declaration
[45] elementdecl ::= ''[VC: Unique Element Type Declaration]
[46] contentspec ::= 'EMPTY' | 'ANY' | Mixed | children
where the Name gives the element type being declared.
Validity constraint: Unique Element Type Declaration
No element type may be declared more than once.
Examples of element type declarations:
3.2.1 Element Content
[Definition: An element type has element content when elements of that type must
contain only child elements (no character data), optionally separated by white
space (characters matching the nonterminal S).][Definition: In this case, the
constraint includes a content model, a simple grammar governing the allowed
types of the child elements and the order in which they are allowed to appear.]
The grammar is built on content particles (cps), which consist of names, choice
lists of content particles, or sequence lists of content particles:
Element-content Models
[47] children ::= (choice | seq) ('?' | '*' | '+')?
[48] cp ::= (Name | choice | seq) ('?' | '*' | '+')?
[49] choice ::= '(' S? cp ( S? '|' S? cp )+ S? ')'/* */
/* */
[VC: Proper Group/PE Nesting]
[50] seq ::= '(' S? cp ( S? ',' S? cp )* S? ')'/* */
[VC: Proper Group/PE Nesting]
where each Name is the type of an element which may appear as a child. Any
content particle in a choice list may appear in the element content at the
location where the choice list appears in the grammar; content particles
occurring in a sequence list must each appear in the element content in the
order given in the list. The optional character following a name or list governs
whether the element or the content particles in the list may occur one or more
(+), zero or more (*), or zero or one times (?). The absence of such an operator
means that the element or content particle must appear exactly once. This syntax
and meaning are identical to those used in the productions in this
specification.
The content of an element matches a content model if and only if it is possible
to trace out a path through the content model, obeying the sequence, choice, and
repetition operators and matching each element in the content against an element
type in the content model. For compatibility, it is an error if an element in
the document can match more than one occurrence of an element type in the
content model. For more information, see E Deterministic Content Models.
Validity constraint: Proper Group/PE Nesting
Parameter-entity replacement text must be properly nested with parenthesized
groups. That is to say, if either of the opening or closing parentheses in a
choice, seq, or Mixed construct is contained in the replacement text for a
parameter entity, both must be contained in the same replacement text.
For interoperability, if a parameter-entity reference appears in a choice, seq,
or Mixed construct, its replacement text should contain at least one non-blank
character, and neither the first nor last non-blank character of the replacement
text should be a connector (| or ,).
Examples of element-content models:
3.2.2 Mixed Content
[Definition: An element type has mixed content when elements of that type may
contain character data, optionally interspersed with child elements.] In this
case, the types of the child elements may be constrained, but not their order or
their number of occurrences:
Mixed-content Declaration
[51] Mixed ::= '(' S? '#PCDATA' (S? '|' S? Name)* S? ')*'
| '(' S? '#PCDATA' S? ')' [VC: Proper Group/PE Nesting]
[VC: No Duplicate Types]
where the Names give the types of elements that may appear as children. The
keyword #PCDATA derives historically from the term "parsed character data."
Validity constraint: No Duplicate Types
The same name must not appear more than once in a single mixed-content
declaration.
Examples of mixed content declarations:
3.3 Attribute-List Declarations
Attributes are used to associate name-value pairs with elements. Attribute
specifications may appear only within start-tags and empty-element tags; thus,
the productions used to recognize them appear in 3.1 Start-Tags, End-Tags, and
Empty-Element Tags. Attribute-list declarations may be used:
To define the set of attributes pertaining to a given element type.
To establish type constraints for these attributes.
To provide default values for attributes.
[Definition: Attribute-list declarations specify the name, data type, and
default value (if any) of each attribute associated with a given element type:]
Attribute-list Declaration
[52] AttlistDecl ::= ''
[53] AttDef ::= S Name S AttType S DefaultDecl
The Name in the AttlistDecl rule is the type of an element. At user option, an
XML processor may issue a warning if attributes are declared for an element type
not itself declared, but this is not an error. The Name in the AttDef rule is
the name of the attribute.
When more than one AttlistDecl is provided for a given element type, the
contents of all those provided are merged. When more than one definition is
provided for the same attribute of a given element type, the first declaration
is binding and later declarations are ignored. For interoperability, writers of
DTDs may choose to provide at most one attribute-list declaration for a given
element type, at most one attribute definition for a given attribute name in an
attribute-list declaration, and at least one attribute definition in each
attribute-list declaration. For interoperability, an XML processor may at user
option issue a warning when more than one attribute-list declaration is provided
for a given element type, or more than one attribute definition is provided for
a given attribute, but this is not an error.
3.3.1 Attribute Types
XML attribute types are of three kinds: a string type, a set of tokenized types,
and enumerated types. The string type may take any literal string as a value;
the tokenized types have varying lexical and semantic constraints. The validity
constraints noted in the grammar are applied after the attribute value has been
normalized as described in 3.3 Attribute-List Declarations.
Attribute Types
[54] AttType ::= StringType | TokenizedType | EnumeratedType
[55] StringType ::= 'CDATA'
[56] TokenizedType ::= 'ID'[VC: ID]
[VC: One ID per Element Type]
[VC: ID Attribute Default]
| 'IDREF'[VC: IDREF]
| 'IDREFS'[VC: IDREF]
| 'ENTITY'[VC: Entity Name]
| 'ENTITIES'[VC: Entity Name]
| 'NMTOKEN'[VC: Name Token]
| 'NMTOKENS'[VC: Name Token]
Validity constraint: ID
Values of type ID must match the Name production. A name must not appear more
than once in an XML document as a value of this type; i.e., ID values must
uniquely identify the elements which bear them.
Validity constraint: One ID per Element Type
No element type may have more than one ID attribute specified.
Validity constraint: ID Attribute Default
An ID attribute must have a declared default of #IMPLIED or #REQUIRED.
Validity constraint: IDREF
Values of type IDREF must match the Name production, and values of type IDREFS
must match Names; each Name must match the value of an ID attribute on some
element in the XML document; i.e. IDREF values must match the value of some ID
attribute.
Validity constraint: Entity Name
Values of type ENTITY must match the Name production, values of type ENTITIES
must match Names; each Name must match the name of an unparsed entity declared
in the DTD.
Validity constraint: Name Token
Values of type NMTOKEN must match the Nmtoken production; values of type
NMTOKENS must match Nmtokens.
[Definition: Enumerated attributes can take one of a list of values provided in
the declaration]. There are two kinds of enumerated types:
Enumerated Attribute Types
[57] EnumeratedType ::= NotationType | Enumeration
[58] NotationType ::= 'NOTATION' S '(' S? Name (S? '|' S?
Name)* S? ')' [VC: Notation Attributes]
[VC: One Notation Per Element Type]
[VC: No Notation on Empty Element]
[59] Enumeration ::= '(' S? Nmtoken (S? '|' S? Nmtoken)* S?
')'[VC: Enumeration]
A NOTATION attribute identifies a notation, declared in the DTD with associated
system and/or public identifiers, to be used in interpreting the element to
which the attribute is attached.
Validity constraint: Notation Attributes
Values of this type must match one of the notation names included in the
declaration; all notation names in the declaration must be declared.
Validity constraint: One Notation Per Element Type
No element type may have more than one NOTATION attribute specified.
Validity constraint: No Notation on Empty Element
For compatibility, an attribute of type NOTATION must not be declared on an
element declared EMPTY.
Validity constraint: Enumeration
Values of this type must match one of the Nmtoken tokens in the declaration.
For interoperability, the same Nmtoken should not occur more than once in the
enumerated attribute types of a single element type.
3.3.2 Attribute Defaults
An attribute declaration provides information on whether the attribute's
presence is required, and if not, how an XML processor should react if a
declared attribute is absent in a document.
Attribute Defaults
[60] DefaultDecl ::= '#REQUIRED' | '#IMPLIED'
| (('#FIXED' S)? AttValue)[VC: Required Attribute]
[VC: Attribute Default Legal]
[WFC: No < in Attribute Values]
[VC: Fixed Attribute Default]
In an attribute declaration, #REQUIRED means that the attribute must always be
provided, #IMPLIED that no default value is provided. [Definition: If the
declaration is neither #REQUIRED nor #IMPLIED, then the AttValue value contains
the declared default value; the #FIXED keyword states that the attribute must
always have the default value. If a default value is declared, when an XML
processor encounters an omitted attribute, it is to behave as though the
attribute were present with the declared default value.]
Validity constraint: Required Attribute
If the default declaration is the keyword #REQUIRED, then the attribute must be
specified for all elements of the type in the attribute-list declaration.
Validity constraint: Attribute Default Legal
The declared default value must meet the lexical constraints of the declared
attribute type.
Validity constraint: Fixed Attribute Default
If an attribute has a default value declared with the #FIXED keyword, instances
of that attribute must match the default value.
Examples of attribute-list declarations:
3.3.3 Attribute-Value Normalization
Before the value of an attribute is passed to the application or checked for
validity, the XML processor must normalize the attribute value by applying the
algorithm below, or by using some other method such that the value passed to the
application is the same as that produced by the algorithm.
All line breaks must have been normalized on input to #xA as described in
2.11 End-of-Line Handling, so the rest of this algorithm operates on text
normalized in this way.
Begin with a normalized value consisting of the empty string.
For each character, entity reference, or character reference in the
unnormalized attribute value, beginning with the first and continuing to the
last, do the following:
For a character reference, append the referenced character to the
normalized value.
For an entity reference, recursively apply step 3 of this algorithm to
the replacement text of the entity.
For a white space character (#x20, #xD, #xA, #x9), append a space
character (#x20) to the normalized value.
For another character, append the character to the normalized value.
If the attribute type is not CDATA, then the XML processor must further process
the normalized attribute value by discarding any leading and trailing space
(#x20) characters, and by replacing sequences of space (#x20) characters by a
single space (#x20) character.
Note that if the unnormalized attribute value contains a character reference to
a white space character other than space (#x20), the normalized value contains
the referenced character itself (#xD, #xA or #x9). This contrasts with the case
where the unnormalized value contains a white space character (not a reference),
which is replaced with a space character (#x20) in the normalized value and also
contrasts with the case where the unnormalized value contains an entity
reference whose replacement text contains a white space character; being
recursively processed, the white space character is replaced with a space
character (#x20) in the normalized value.
All attributes for which no declaration has been read should be treated by a
non-validating processor as if declared CDATA.
Following are examples of attribute normalization. Given the following
declarations:
the attribute specifications in the left column below would be normalized to the
character sequences of the middle column if the attribute a is declared NMTOKENS
and to those of the right columns if a is declared CDATA.
Attribute specificationa is NMTOKENSa is CDATA
a="
xyz"
x y z#x20 #x20 x y z
a="&d;&d;A&a;&a;B&da;"
A #x20 B#x20 #x20 A #x20 #x20 B #x20 #x20
a=
"
A
B
"
#xD #xD A #xA #xA B #xD #xA#xD #xD A #xA #xA B #xD #xD
Note that the last example is invalid (but well-formed) if a is declared to be
of type NMTOKENS.
3.4 Conditional Sections
[Definition: Conditional sections are portions of the document type declaration
external subset which are included in, or excluded from, the logical structure
of the DTD based on the keyword which governs them.]
Conditional Section
[61] conditionalSect ::= includeSect | ignoreSect
[62] includeSect ::= '' /* */
[VC: Proper Conditional Section/PE Nesting]
[63] ignoreSect ::= ''/* */
[VC: Proper Conditional Section/PE Nesting]
[64] ignoreSectContents ::= Ignore ('' Ignore)*
[65] Ignore ::= Char* - (Char* ('') Char*)
Validity constraint: Proper Conditional Section/PE Nesting
If any of the "" of a conditional section is contained in the
replacement text for a parameter-entity reference, all of them must be contained
in the same replacement text.
Like the internal and external DTD subsets, a conditional section may contain
one or more complete declarations, comments, processing instructions, or nested
conditional sections, intermingled with white space.
If the keyword of the conditional section is INCLUDE, then the contents of the
conditional section are part of the DTD. If the keyword of the conditional
section is IGNORE, then the contents of the conditional section are not
logically part of the DTD. If a conditional section with a keyword of INCLUDE
occurs within a larger conditional section with a keyword of IGNORE, both the
outer and the inner conditional sections are ignored. The contents of an ignored
conditional section are parsed by ignoring all characters after the "["
following the keyword, except conditional section starts "",
until the matching conditional section end is found. Parameter entity references
are not recognized in this process.
If the keyword of the conditional section is a parameter-entity reference, the
parameter entity must be replaced by its content before the processor decides
whether to include or ignore the conditional section.
An example:
]]>
]]>
4 Physical Structures
[Definition: An XML document may consist of one or many storage units. These are
called entities; they all have content and are all (except for the document
entity and the external DTD subset) identified by entity name.] Each XML
document has one entity called the document entity, which serves as the starting
point for the XML processor and may contain the whole document.
Entities may be either parsed or unparsed. [Definition: A parsed entity's
contents are referred to as its replacement text; this text is considered an
integral part of the document.]
[Definition: An unparsed entity is a resource whose contents may or may not be
text, and if text, may be other than XML. Each unparsed entity has an associated
notation, identified by name. Beyond a requirement that an XML processor make
the identifiers for the entity and notation available to the application, XML
places no constraints on the contents of unparsed entities.]
Parsed entities are invoked by name using entity references; unparsed entities
by name, given in the value of ENTITY or ENTITIES attributes.
[Definition: General entities are entities for use within the document content.
In this specification, general entities are sometimes referred to with the
unqualified term entity when this leads to no ambiguity.] [Definition: Parameter
entities are parsed entities for use within the DTD.] These two types of
entities use different forms of reference and are recognized in different
contexts. Furthermore, they occupy different namespaces; a parameter entity and
a general entity with the same name are two distinct entities.
4.1 Character and Entity References
[Definition: A character reference refers to a specific character in the ISO/IEC
10646 character set, for example one not directly accessible from available
input devices.]
Character Reference
[66] CharRef ::= '' [0-9]+ ';'
| '' [0-9a-fA-F]+ ';'[WFC: Legal Character]
Well-formedness constraint: Legal Character
Characters referred to using character references must match the production for
Char.
If the character reference begins with "", the digits and letters up to the
terminating ; provide a hexadecimal representation of the character's code point
in ISO/IEC 10646. If it begins just with "", the digits up to the terminating
; provide a decimal representation of the character's code point.
[Definition: An entity reference refers to the content of a named entity.]
[Definition: References to parsed general entities use ampersand (&) and
semicolon (;) as delimiters.] [Definition: Parameter-entity references use
percent-sign (%) and semicolon (;) as delimiters.]
Entity Reference
[67] Reference ::= EntityRef | CharRef
[68] EntityRef ::= '&' Name ';'[WFC: Entity Declared]
[VC: Entity Declared]
[WFC: Parsed Entity]
[WFC: No Recursion]
[69] PEReference ::= '%' Name ';'[VC: Entity Declared]
[WFC: No Recursion]
[WFC: In DTD]
Well-formedness constraint: Entity Declared
In a document without any DTD, a document with only an internal DTD subset which
contains no parameter entity references, or a document with "standalone='yes'",
for an entity reference that does not occur within the external subset or a
parameter entity, the Name given in the entity reference must match that in an
entity declaration that does not occur within the external subset or a parameter
entity, except that well-formed documents need not declare any of the following
entities: amp, lt, gt, apos, quot. The declaration of a general entity must
precede any reference to it which appears in a default value in an
attribute-list declaration.
Note that if entities are declared in the external subset or in external
parameter entities, a non-validating processor is not obligated to read and
process their declarations; for such documents, the rule that an entity must be
declared is a well-formedness constraint only if standalone='yes'.
Validity constraint: Entity Declared
In a document with an external subset or external parameter entities with
"standalone='no'", the Name given in the entity reference must match that in an
entity declaration. For interoperability, valid documents should declare the
entities amp, lt, gt, apos, quot, in the form specified in 4.6 Predefined
Entities. The declaration of a parameter entity must precede any reference to
it. Similarly, the declaration of a general entity must precede any
attribute-list declaration containing a default value with a direct or indirect
reference to that general entity.
Well-formedness constraint: Parsed Entity
An entity reference must not contain the name of an unparsed entity. Unparsed
entities may be referred to only in attribute values declared to be of type
ENTITY or ENTITIES.
Well-formedness constraint: No Recursion
A parsed entity must not contain a recursive reference to itself, either
directly or indirectly.
Well-formedness constraint: In DTD
Parameter-entity references may only appear in the DTD.
Examples of character and entity references:
Type less-than (<) to save options.
This document was prepared on &docdate; and
is classified &security-level;.
Example of a parameter-entity reference:
%ISOLat2;
4.2 Entity Declarations
[Definition: Entities are declared thus:]
Entity Declaration
[70] EntityDecl ::= GEDecl | PEDecl
[71] GEDecl ::= ''
[72] PEDecl ::= ''
[73] EntityDef ::= EntityValue | (ExternalID NDataDecl?)
[74] PEDef ::= EntityValue | ExternalID
The Name identifies the entity in an entity reference or, in the case of an
unparsed entity, in the value of an ENTITY or ENTITIES attribute. If the same
entity is declared more than once, the first declaration encountered is binding;
at user option, an XML processor may issue a warning if entities are declared
multiple times.
4.2.1 Internal Entities
[Definition: If the entity definition is an EntityValue, the defined entity is
called an internal entity. There is no separate physical storage object, and the
content of the entity is given in the declaration.] Note that some processing of
entity and character references in the literal entity value may be required to
produce the correct replacement text: see 4.5 Construction of Internal Entity
Replacement Text.
An internal entity is a parsed entity.
Example of an internal entity declaration:
4.2.2 External Entities
[Definition: If the entity is not internal, it is an external entity, declared
as follows:]
External Entity Declaration
[75] ExternalID ::= 'SYSTEM' S SystemLiteral
| 'PUBLIC' S PubidLiteral S SystemLiteral
[76] NDataDecl ::= S 'NDATA' S Name[VC: Notation Declared]
If the NDataDecl is present, this is a general unparsed entity; otherwise it is
a parsed entity.
Validity constraint: Notation Declared
The Name must match the declared name of a notation.
[Definition: The SystemLiteral is called the entity's system identifier. It is a
URI reference (as defined in [IETF RFC 2396], updated by [IETF RFC 2732]), meant
to be dereferenced to obtain input for the XML processor to construct the
entity's replacement text.] It is an error for a fragment identifier (beginning
with a # character) to be part of a system identifier. Unless otherwise provided
by information outside the scope of this specification (e.g. a special XML
element type defined by a particular DTD, or a processing instruction defined by
a particular application specification), relative URIs are relative to the
location of the resource within which the entity declaration occurs. A URI might
thus be relative to the document entity, to the entity containing the external
DTD subset, or to some other external parameter entity.
URI references require encoding and escaping of certain characters. The
disallowed characters include all non-ASCII characters, plus the excluded
characters listed in Section 2.4 of [IETF RFC 2396], except for the number sign
(#) and percent sign (%) characters and the square bracket characters re-allowed
in [IETF RFC 2732]. Disallowed characters must be escaped as follows:
Each disallowed character is converted to UTF-8 [IETF RFC 2279] as one or
more bytes.
Any octets corresponding to a disallowed character are escaped with the URI
escaping mechanism (that is, converted to %HH, where HH is the hexadecimal
notation of the byte value).
The original character is replaced by the resulting character sequence.
[Definition: In addition to a system identifier, an external identifier may
include a public identifier.] An XML processor attempting to retrieve the
entity's content may use the public identifier to try to generate an alternative
URI reference. If the processor is unable to do so, it must use the URI
reference specified in the system literal. Before a match is attempted, all
strings of white space in the public identifier must be normalized to single
space characters (#x20), and leading and trailing white space must be removed.
Examples of external entity declarations:
4.3 Parsed Entities
4.3.1 The Text Declaration
External parsed entities should each begin with a text declaration.
Text Declaration
[77] TextDecl ::= ''
The text declaration must be provided literally, not by reference to a parsed
entity. No text declaration may appear at any position other than the beginning
of an external parsed entity. The text declaration in an external parsed entity
is not considered part of its replacement text.
4.3.2 Well-Formed Parsed Entities
The document entity is well-formed if it matches the production labeled
document. An external general parsed entity is well-formed if it matches the
production labeled extParsedEnt. All external parameter entities are well-formed
by definition.
Well-Formed External Parsed Entity
[78] extParsedEnt ::= TextDecl? content
An internal general parsed entity is well-formed if its replacement text matches
the production labeled content. All internal parameter entities are well-formed
by definition.
A consequence of well-formedness in entities is that the logical and physical
structures in an XML document are properly nested; no start-tag, end-tag,
empty-element tag, element, comment, processing instruction, character
reference, or entity reference can begin in one entity and end in another.
4.3.3 Character Encoding in Entities
Each external parsed entity in an XML document may use a different encoding for
its characters. All XML processors must be able to read entities in both the
UTF-8 and UTF-16 encodings. The terms "UTF-8" and "UTF-16" in this specification
do not apply to character encodings with any other labels, even if the encodings
or labels are very similar to UTF-8 or UTF-16.
Entities encoded in UTF-16 must begin with the Byte Order Mark described by
Annex F of [ISO/IEC 10646], Annex H of [ISO/IEC 10646-2000], section 2.4 of
[Unicode], and section 2.7 of [Unicode3] (the ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE
character, #xFEFF). This is an encoding signature, not part of either the markup
or the character data of the XML document. XML processors must be able to use
this character to differentiate between UTF-8 and UTF-16 encoded documents.
Although an XML processor is required to read only entities in the UTF-8 and
UTF-16 encodings, it is recognized that other encodings are used around the
world, and it may be desired for XML processors to read entities that use them.
In the absence of external character encoding information (such as MIME
headers), parsed entities which are stored in an encoding other than UTF-8 or
UTF-16 must begin with a text declaration (see 4.3.1 The Text Declaration)
containing an encoding declaration:
Encoding Declaration
[80] EncodingDecl ::= S 'encoding' Eq ('"' EncName '"' | "'"
EncName "'" )
[81] EncName ::= [A-Za-z] ([A-Za-z0-9._] | '-')*/* Encoding
name contains only Latin characters */
In the document entity, the encoding declaration is part of the XML declaration.
The EncName is the name of the encoding used.
In an encoding declaration, the values "UTF-8", "UTF-16", "ISO-10646-UCS-2", and
"ISO-10646-UCS-4" should be used for the various encodings and transformations
of Unicode / ISO/IEC 10646, the values "ISO-8859-1", "ISO-8859-2", ...
"ISO-8859-n" (where n is the part number) should be used for the parts of ISO
8859, and the values "ISO-2022-JP", "Shift_JIS", and "EUC-JP" should be used for
the various encoded forms of JIS X-0208-1997. It is recommended that character
encodings registered (as charsets) with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
[IANA-CHARSETS], other than those just listed, be referred to using their
registered names; other encodings should use names starting with an "x-" prefix.
XML processors should match character encoding names in a case-insensitive way
and should either interpret an IANA-registered name as the encoding registered
at IANA for that name or treat it as unknown (processors are, of course, not
required to support all IANA-registered encodings).
In the absence of information provided by an external transport protocol (e.g.
HTTP or MIME), it is an error for an entity including an encoding declaration to
be presented to the XML processor in an encoding other than that named in the
declaration, or for an entity which begins with neither a Byte Order Mark nor an
encoding declaration to use an encoding other than UTF-8. Note that since ASCII
is a subset of UTF-8, ordinary ASCII entities do not strictly need an encoding
declaration.
It is a fatal error for a TextDecl to occur other than at the beginning of an
external entity.
It is a fatal error when an XML processor encounters an entity with an encoding
that it is unable to process. It is a fatal error if an XML entity is determined
(via default, encoding declaration, or higher-level protocol) to be in a certain
encoding but contains octet sequences that are not legal in that encoding. It is
also a fatal error if an XML entity contains no encoding declaration and its
content is not legal UTF-8 or UTF-16.
Examples of text declarations containing encoding declarations:
4.4 XML Processor Treatment of Entities and References
The table below summarizes the contexts in which character references, entity
references, and invocations of unparsed entities might appear and the required
behavior of an XML processor in each case. The labels in the leftmost column
describe the recognition context:
Reference in Content
as a reference anywhere after the start-tag and before the end-tag of an
element; corresponds to the nonterminal content.
Reference in Attribute Value
as a reference within either the value of an attribute in a start-tag, or a
default value in an attribute declaration; corresponds to the nonterminal
AttValue.
Occurs as Attribute Value
as a Name, not a reference, appearing either as the value of an attribute
which has been declared as type ENTITY, or as one of the space-separated
tokens in the value of an attribute which has been declared as type
ENTITIES.
Reference in Entity Value
as a reference within a parameter or internal entity's literal entity value
in the entity's declaration; corresponds to the nonterminal EntityValue.
Reference in DTD
as a reference within either the internal or external subsets of the DTD,
but outside of an EntityValue, AttValue, PI, Comment, SystemLiteral,
PubidLiteral, or the contents of an ignored conditional section (see 3.4
Conditional Sections).
.
Entity TypeCharacter
ParameterInternal GeneralExternal Parsed GeneralUnparsed
Reference in ContentNot recognizedIncludedIncluded if
validatingForbiddenIncluded
Reference in Attribute ValueNot recognizedIncluded in
literalForbiddenForbiddenIncluded
Occurs as Attribute ValueNot recognizedForbiddenForbiddenNotifyNot
recognized
Reference in EntityValueIncluded in
literalBypassedBypassedForbiddenIncluded
Reference in DTDIncluded as PEForbiddenForbiddenForbiddenForbidden
4.4.1 Not Recognized
Outside the DTD, the % character has no special significance; thus, what would
be parameter entity references in the DTD are not recognized as markup in
content. Similarly, the names of unparsed entities are not recognized except
when they appear in the value of an appropriately declared attribute.
4.4.2 Included
[Definition: An entity is included when its replacement text is retrieved and
processed, in place of the reference itself, as though it were part of the
document at the location the reference was recognized.] The replacement text may
contain both character data and (except for parameter entities) markup, which
must be recognized in the usual way. (The string "AT&T;" expands to "AT&T;"
and the remaining ampersand is not recognized as an entity-reference delimiter.)
A character reference is included when the indicated character is processed in
place of the reference itself.
4.4.3 Included If Validating
When an XML processor recognizes a reference to a parsed entity, in order to
validate the document, the processor must include its replacement text. If the
entity is external, and the processor is not attempting to validate the XML
document, the processor may, but need not, include the entity's replacement
text. If a non-validating processor does not include the replacement text, it
must inform the application that it recognized, but did not read, the entity.
This rule is based on the recognition that the automatic inclusion provided by
the SGML and XML entity mechanism, primarily designed to support modularity in
authoring, is not necessarily appropriate for other applications, in particular
document browsing. Browsers, for example, when encountering an external parsed
entity reference, might choose to provide a visual indication of the entity's
presence and retrieve it for display only on demand.
4.4.4 Forbidden
The following are forbidden, and constitute fatal errors:
the appearance of a reference to an unparsed entity.
the appearance of any character or general-entity reference in the DTD
except within an EntityValue or AttValue.
a reference to an external entity in an attribute value.
4.4.5 Included in Literal
When an entity reference appears in an attribute value, or a parameter entity
reference appears in a literal entity value, its replacement text is processed
in place of the reference itself as though it were part of the document at the
location the reference was recognized, except that a single or double quote
character in the replacement text is always treated as a normal data character
and will not terminate the literal. For example, this is well-formed:
while this is not:
then the replacement text for the entity "book" is:
La Peste: Albert Camus,
© 1947 Éditions Gallimard. &rights;
The general-entity reference "&rights;" would be expanded should the reference
"&book;" appear in the document's content or an attribute value.
These simple rules may have complex interactions; for a detailed discussion of a
difficult example, see D Expansion of Entity and Character References.
4.6 Predefined Entities
[Definition: Entity and character references can both be used to escape the left
angle bracket, ampersand, and other delimiters. A set of general entities (amp,
lt, gt, apos, quot) is specified for this purpose. Numeric character references
may also be used; they are expanded immediately when recognized and must be
treated as character data, so the numeric character references "<" and
"&" may be used to escape < and & when they occur in character data.]
All XML processors must recognize these entities whether they are declared or
not. For interoperability, valid XML documents should declare these entities,
like any others, before using them. If the entities lt or amp are declared, they
must be declared as internal entities whose replacement text is a character
reference to the respective character (less-than sign or ampersand) being
escaped; the double escaping is required for these entities so that references
to them produce a well-formed result. If the entities gt, apos, or quot are
declared, they must be declared as internal entities whose replacement text is
the single character being escaped (or a character reference to that character;
the double escaping here is unnecessary but harmless). For example:
4.7 Notation Declarations
[Definition: Notations identify by name the format of unparsed entities, the
format of elements which bear a notation attribute, or the application to which
a processing instruction is addressed.]
[Definition: Notation declarations provide a name for the notation, for use in
entity and attribute-list declarations and in attribute specifications, and an
external identifier for the notation which may allow an XML processor or its
client application to locate a helper application capable of processing data in
the given notation.]
Notation Declarations
[82] NotationDecl ::= ''[VC: Unique Notation Name]
[83] PublicID ::= 'PUBLIC' S PubidLiteral
Validity constraint: Unique Notation Name
Only one notation declaration can declare a given Name.
XML processors must provide applications with the name and external
identifier(s) of any notation declared and referred to in an attribute value,
attribute definition, or entity declaration. They may additionally resolve the
external identifier into the system identifier, file name, or other information
needed to allow the application to call a processor for data in the notation
described. (It is not an error, however, for XML documents to declare and refer
to notations for which notation-specific applications are not available on the
system where the XML processor or application is running.)
4.8 Document Entity
[Definition: The document entity serves as the root of the entity tree and a
starting-point for an XML processor.] This specification does not specify how
the document entity is to be located by an XML processor; unlike other entities,
the document entity has no name and might well appear on a processor input
stream without any identification at all.
5 Conformance
5.1 Validating and Non-Validating Processors
Conforming XML processors fall into two classes: validating and non-validating.
Validating and non-validating processors alike must report violations of this
specification's well-formedness constraints in the content of the document
entity and any other parsed entities that they read.
[Definition: Validating processors must, at user option, report violations of
the constraints expressed by the declarations in the DTD, and failures to
fulfill the validity constraints given in this specification.] To accomplish
this, validating XML processors must read and process the entire DTD and all
external parsed entities referenced in the document.
Non-validating processors are required to check only the document entity,
including the entire internal DTD subset, for well-formedness. [Definition:
While they are not required to check the document for validity, they are
required to process all the declarations they read in the internal DTD subset
and in any parameter entity that they read, up to the first reference to a
parameter entity that they do not read; that is to say, they must use the
information in those declarations to normalize attribute values, include the
replacement text of internal entities, and supply default attribute values.]
Except when standalone="yes", they must not process entity declarations or
attribute-list declarations encountered after a reference to a parameter entity
that is not read, since the entity may have contained overriding declarations.
5.2 Using XML Processors
The behavior of a validating XML processor is highly predictable; it must read
every piece of a document and report all well-formedness and validity
violations. Less is required of a non-validating processor; it need not read any
part of the document other than the document entity. This has two effects that
may be important to users of XML processors:
Certain well-formedness errors, specifically those that require reading
external entities, may not be detected by a non-validating processor.
Examples include the constraints entitled Entity Declared, Parsed Entity,
and No Recursion, as well as some of the cases described as forbidden in 4.4
XML Processor Treatment of Entities and References.
The information passed from the processor to the application may vary,
depending on whether the processor reads parameter and external entities.
For example, a non-validating processor may not normalize attribute values,
include the replacement text of internal entities, or supply default
attribute values, where doing so depends on having read declarations in
external or parameter entities.
For maximum reliability in interoperating between different XML processors,
applications which use non-validating processors should not rely on any
behaviors not required of such processors. Applications which require facilities
such as the use of default attributes or internal entities which are declared in
external entities should use validating XML processors.
6 Notation
The formal grammar of XML is given in this specification using a simple Extended
Backus-Naur Form (EBNF) notation. Each rule in the grammar defines one symbol,
in the form
symbol ::= expression
Symbols are written with an initial capital letter if they are the start symbol
of a regular language, otherwise with an initial lower case letter. Literal
strings are quoted.
Within the expression on the right-hand side of a rule, the following
expressions are used to match strings of one or more characters:
#xN
where N is a hexadecimal integer, the expression matches the character in
ISO/IEC 10646 whose canonical (UCS-4) code value, when interpreted as an
unsigned binary number, has the value indicated. The number of leading zeros
in the #xN form is insignificant; the number of leading zeros in the
corresponding code value is governed by the character encoding in use and is
not significant for XML.
[a-zA-Z], [#xN-#xN]
matches any Char with a value in the range(s) indicated (inclusive).
[abc], [#xN#xN#xN]
matches any Char with a value among the characters enumerated. Enumerations
and ranges can be mixed in one set of brackets.
[^a-z], [^#xN-#xN]
matches any Char with a value outside the range indicated.
[^abc], [^#xN#xN#xN]
matches any Char with a value not among the characters given. Enumerations
and ranges of forbidden values can be mixed in one set of brackets.
"string"
matches a literal string matching that given inside the double quotes.
'string'
matches a literal string matching that given inside the single quotes.
These symbols may be combined to match more complex patterns as follows, where A
and B represent simple expressions:
(expression)
expression is treated as a unit and may be combined as described in this
list.
A?
matches A or nothing; optional A.
A B
matches A followed by B. This operator has higher precedence than
alternation; thus A B | C D is identical to (A B) | (C D).
A | B
matches A or B but not both.
A - B
matches any string that matches A but does not match B.
A+
matches one or more occurrences of A.Concatenation has higher precedence
than alternation; thus A+ | B+ is identical to (A+) | (B+).
A*
matches zero or more occurrences of A. Concatenation has higher precedence
than alternation; thus A* | B* is identical to (A*) | (B*).
Other notations used in the productions are:
/* ... */
comment.
[ wfc: ... ]
well-formedness constraint; this identifies by name a constraint on
well-formed documents associated with a production.
[ vc: ... ]
validity constraint; this identifies by name a constraint on valid documents
associated with a production.
A References
A.1 Normative References
IANA-CHARSETS
(Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) Official Names for Character Sets, ed.
Keld Simonsen et al. See
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/character-sets.
IETF RFC 1766
IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). RFC 1766: Tags for the
Identification of Languages, ed. H. Alvestrand. 1995. (See
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1766.txt.)
ISO/IEC 10646
ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO/IEC 10646-1993
(E). Information technology -- Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set
(UCS) -- Part 1: Architecture and Basic Multilingual Plane. [Geneva]:
International Organization for Standardization, 1993 (plus amendments AM 1
through AM 7).
ISO/IEC 10646-2000
ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000.
Information technology -- Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS)
-- Part 1: Architecture and Basic Multilingual Plane. [Geneva]:
International Organization for Standardization, 2000.
Unicode
The Unicode Consortium. The Unicode Standard, Version 2.0. Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley Developers Press, 1996.
Unicode3
The Unicode Consortium. The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0. Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley Developers Press, 2000. ISBN 0-201-61633-5.
A.2 Other References
Aho/Ullman
Aho, Alfred V., Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman. Compilers: Principles,
Techniques, and Tools. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1986, rpt. corr. 1988.
Berners-Lee et al.
Berners-Lee, T., R. Fielding, and L. Masinter. Uniform Resource Identifiers
(URI): Generic Syntax and Semantics. 1997. (Work in progress; see updates to
RFC1738.)
Brüggemann-Klein
Brüggemann-Klein, Anne. Formal Models in Document Processing.
Habilitationsschrift. Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Freiburg,
1993. (See
ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/documents/papers/brueggem/habil.ps.)
Brüggemann-Klein and Wood
Brüggemann-Klein, Anne, and Derick Wood. Deterministic Regular Languages.
Universität Freiburg, Institut für Informatik, Bericht 38, Oktober 1991.
Extended abstract in A. Finkel, M. Jantzen, Hrsg., STACS 1992, S. 173-184.
Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1992. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 577. Full
version titled One-Unambiguous Regular Languages in Information and
Computation 140 (2): 229-253, February 1998.
Clark
James Clark. Comparison of SGML and XML. See
http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-sgml-xml-971215.
IANA-LANGCODES
(Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) Registry of Language Tags, ed. Keld
Simonsen et al. (See
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/languages/.)
IETF RFC2141
IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). RFC 2141: URN Syntax, ed. R. Moats.
1997. (See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2141.txt.)
IETF RFC 2279
IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). RFC 2279: UTF-8, a transformation
format of ISO 10646, ed. F. Yergeau, 1998. (See
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2279.txt.)
IETF RFC 2376
IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). RFC 2376: XML Media Types. ed. E.
Whitehead, M. Murata. 1998. (See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2376.txt.)
IETF RFC 2396
IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). RFC 2396: Uniform Resource
Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax. T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, L. Masinter.
1998. (See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt.)
IETF RFC 2732
IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). RFC 2732: Format for Literal IPv6
Addresses in URL's. R. Hinden, B. Carpenter, L. Masinter. 1999. (See
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2732.txt.)
IETF RFC 2781
IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). RFC 2781: UTF-16, an encoding of ISO
10646, ed. P. Hoffman, F. Yergeau. 2000. (See
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2781.txt.)
ISO 639
(International Organization for Standardization). ISO 639:1988 (E). Code for
the representation of names of languages. [Geneva]: International
Organization for Standardization, 1988.
ISO 3166
(International Organization for Standardization). ISO 3166-1:1997 (E). Codes
for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions -- Part
1: Country codes [Geneva]: International Organization for Standardization,
1997.
ISO 8879
ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO 8879:1986(E).
Information processing -- Text and Office Systems -- Standard Generalized
Markup Language (SGML). First edition -- 1986-10-15. [Geneva]: International
Organization for Standardization, 1986.
ISO/IEC 10744
ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO/IEC 10744-1992
(E). Information technology -- Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language
(HyTime). [Geneva]: International Organization for Standardization, 1992.
Extended Facilities Annexe. [Geneva]: International Organization for
Standardization, 1996.
WEBSGML
ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO 8879:1986 TC2.
Information technology -- Document Description and Processing Languages.
[Geneva]: International Organization for Standardization, 1998. (See
http://www.sgmlsource.com/8879rev/n0029.htm.)
XML Names
Tim Bray, Dave Hollander, and Andrew Layman, editors. Namespaces in XML.
Textuality, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft. World Wide Web Consortium, 1999.
(See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/.)
B Character Classes
Following the characteristics defined in the Unicode standard, characters are
classed as base characters (among others, these contain the alphabetic
characters of the Latin alphabet), ideographic characters, and combining
characters (among others, this class contains most diacritics) Digits and
extenders are also distinguished.
Characters
[84] Letter ::= BaseChar | Ideographic
[85] BaseChar ::= [#x0041-#x005A] | [#x0061-#x007A] |
[#x00C0-#x00D6] | [#x00D8-#x00F6] | [#x00F8-#x00FF] |
[#x0100-#x0131] | [#x0134-#x013E] | [#x0141-#x0148] |
[#x014A-#x017E] | [#x0180-#x01C3] | [#x01CD-#x01F0] |
[#x01F4-#x01F5] | [#x01FA-#x0217] | [#x0250-#x02A8] |
[#x02BB-#x02C1] | #x0386 | [#x0388-#x038A] | #x038C |
[#x038E-#x03A1] | [#x03A3-#x03CE] | [#x03D0-#x03D6] | #x03DA |
#x03DC | #x03DE | #x03E0 | [#x03E2-#x03F3] | [#x0401-#x040C] |
[#x040E-#x044F] | [#x0451-#x045C] | [#x045E-#x0481] |
[#x0490-#x04C4] | [#x04C7-#x04C8] | [#x04CB-#x04CC] |
[#x04D0-#x04EB] | [#x04EE-#x04F5] | [#x04F8-#x04F9] |
[#x0531-#x0556] | #x0559 | [#x0561-#x0586] | [#x05D0-#x05EA] |
[#x05F0-#x05F2] | [#x0621-#x063A] | [#x0641-#x064A] |
[#x0671-#x06B7] | [#x06BA-#x06BE] | [#x06C0-#x06CE] |
[#x06D0-#x06D3] | #x06D5 | [#x06E5-#x06E6] | [#x0905-#x0939] |
#x093D | [#x0958-#x0961] | [#x0985-#x098C] | [#x098F-#x0990] |
[#x0993-#x09A8] | [#x09AA-#x09B0] | #x09B2 | [#x09B6-#x09B9] |
[#x09DC-#x09DD] | [#x09DF-#x09E1] | [#x09F0-#x09F1] |
[#x0A05-#x0A0A] | [#x0A0F-#x0A10] | [#x0A13-#x0A28] |
[#x0A2A-#x0A30] | [#x0A32-#x0A33] | [#x0A35-#x0A36] |
[#x0A38-#x0A39] | [#x0A59-#x0A5C] | #x0A5E | [#x0A72-#x0A74] |
[#x0A85-#x0A8B] | #x0A8D | [#x0A8F-#x0A91] | [#x0A93-#x0AA8] |
[#x0AAA-#x0AB0] | [#x0AB2-#x0AB3] | [#x0AB5-#x0AB9] | #x0ABD |
#x0AE0 | [#x0B05-#x0B0C] | [#x0B0F-#x0B10] | [#x0B13-#x0B28] |
[#x0B2A-#x0B30] | [#x0B32-#x0B33] | [#x0B36-#x0B39] | #x0B3D |
[#x0B5C-#x0B5D] | [#x0B5F-#x0B61] | [#x0B85-#x0B8A] |
[#x0B8E-#x0B90] | [#x0B92-#x0B95] | [#x0B99-#x0B9A] | #x0B9C |
[#x0B9E-#x0B9F] | [#x0BA3-#x0BA4] | [#x0BA8-#x0BAA] |
[#x0BAE-#x0BB5] | [#x0BB7-#x0BB9] | [#x0C05-#x0C0C] |
[#x0C0E-#x0C10] | [#x0C12-#x0C28] | [#x0C2A-#x0C33] |
[#x0C35-#x0C39] | [#x0C60-#x0C61] | [#x0C85-#x0C8C] |
[#x0C8E-#x0C90] | [#x0C92-#x0CA8] | [#x0CAA-#x0CB3] |
[#x0CB5-#x0CB9] | #x0CDE | [#x0CE0-#x0CE1] | [#x0D05-#x0D0C] |
[#x0D0E-#x0D10] | [#x0D12-#x0D28] | [#x0D2A-#x0D39] |
[#x0D60-#x0D61] | [#x0E01-#x0E2E] | #x0E30 | [#x0E32-#x0E33] |
[#x0E40-#x0E45] | [#x0E81-#x0E82] | #x0E84 | [#x0E87-#x0E88] |
#x0E8A | #x0E8D | [#x0E94-#x0E97] | [#x0E99-#x0E9F] |
[#x0EA1-#x0EA3] | #x0EA5 | #x0EA7 | [#x0EAA-#x0EAB] |
[#x0EAD-#x0EAE] | #x0EB0 | [#x0EB2-#x0EB3] | #x0EBD |
[#x0EC0-#x0EC4] | [#x0F40-#x0F47] | [#x0F49-#x0F69] |
[#x10A0-#x10C5] | [#x10D0-#x10F6] | #x1100 | [#x1102-#x1103] |
[#x1105-#x1107] | #x1109 | [#x110B-#x110C] | [#x110E-#x1112] |
#x113C | #x113E | #x1140 | #x114C | #x114E | #x1150 |
[#x1154-#x1155] | #x1159 | [#x115F-#x1161] | #x1163 | #x1165 |
#x1167 | #x1169 | [#x116D-#x116E] | [#x1172-#x1173] | #x1175 |
#x119E | #x11A8 | #x11AB | [#x11AE-#x11AF] | [#x11B7-#x11B8] |
#x11BA | [#x11BC-#x11C2] | #x11EB | #x11F0 | #x11F9 |
[#x1E00-#x1E9B] | [#x1EA0-#x1EF9] | [#x1F00-#x1F15] |
[#x1F18-#x1F1D] | [#x1F20-#x1F45] | [#x1F48-#x1F4D] |
[#x1F50-#x1F57] | #x1F59 | #x1F5B | #x1F5D | [#x1F5F-#x1F7D] |
[#x1F80-#x1FB4] | [#x1FB6-#x1FBC] | #x1FBE | [#x1FC2-#x1FC4] |
[#x1FC6-#x1FCC] | [#x1FD0-#x1FD3] | [#x1FD6-#x1FDB] |
[#x1FE0-#x1FEC] | [#x1FF2-#x1FF4] | [#x1FF6-#x1FFC] | #x2126 |
[#x212A-#x212B] | #x212E | [#x2180-#x2182] | [#x3041-#x3094] |
[#x30A1-#x30FA] | [#x3105-#x312C] | [#xAC00-#xD7A3]
[86] Ideographic ::= [#x4E00-#x9FA5] | #x3007 |
[#x3021-#x3029]
[87] CombiningChar ::= [#x0300-#x0345] | [#x0360-#x0361] |
[#x0483-#x0486] | [#x0591-#x05A1] | [#x05A3-#x05B9] |
[#x05BB-#x05BD] | #x05BF | [#x05C1-#x05C2] | #x05C4 |
[#x064B-#x0652] | #x0670 | [#x06D6-#x06DC] | [#x06DD-#x06DF] |
[#x06E0-#x06E4] | [#x06E7-#x06E8] | [#x06EA-#x06ED] |
[#x0901-#x0903] | #x093C | [#x093E-#x094C] | #x094D |
[#x0951-#x0954] | [#x0962-#x0963] | [#x0981-#x0983] | #x09BC |
#x09BE | #x09BF | [#x09C0-#x09C4] | [#x09C7-#x09C8] |
[#x09CB-#x09CD] | #x09D7 | [#x09E2-#x09E3] | #x0A02 | #x0A3C |
#x0A3E | #x0A3F | [#x0A40-#x0A42] | [#x0A47-#x0A48] |
[#x0A4B-#x0A4D] | [#x0A70-#x0A71] | [#x0A81-#x0A83] | #x0ABC |
[#x0ABE-#x0AC5] | [#x0AC7-#x0AC9] | [#x0ACB-#x0ACD] |
[#x0B01-#x0B03] | #x0B3C | [#x0B3E-#x0B43] | [#x0B47-#x0B48] |
[#x0B4B-#x0B4D] | [#x0B56-#x0B57] | [#x0B82-#x0B83] |
[#x0BBE-#x0BC2] | [#x0BC6-#x0BC8] | [#x0BCA-#x0BCD] | #x0BD7 |
[#x0C01-#x0C03] | [#x0C3E-#x0C44] | [#x0C46-#x0C48] |
[#x0C4A-#x0C4D] | [#x0C55-#x0C56] | [#x0C82-#x0C83] |
[#x0CBE-#x0CC4] | [#x0CC6-#x0CC8] | [#x0CCA-#x0CCD] |
[#x0CD5-#x0CD6] | [#x0D02-#x0D03] | [#x0D3E-#x0D43] |
[#x0D46-#x0D48] | [#x0D4A-#x0D4D] | #x0D57 | #x0E31 |
[#x0E34-#x0E3A] | [#x0E47-#x0E4E] | #x0EB1 | [#x0EB4-#x0EB9] |
[#x0EBB-#x0EBC] | [#x0EC8-#x0ECD] | [#x0F18-#x0F19] | #x0F35 |
#x0F37 | #x0F39 | #x0F3E | #x0F3F | [#x0F71-#x0F84] |
[#x0F86-#x0F8B] | [#x0F90-#x0F95] | #x0F97 | [#x0F99-#x0FAD] |
[#x0FB1-#x0FB7] | #x0FB9 | [#x20D0-#x20DC] | #x20E1 |
[#x302A-#x302F] | #x3099 | #x309A
[88] Digit ::= [#x0030-#x0039] | [#x0660-#x0669] |
[#x06F0-#x06F9] | [#x0966-#x096F] | [#x09E6-#x09EF] |
[#x0A66-#x0A6F] | [#x0AE6-#x0AEF] | [#x0B66-#x0B6F] |
[#x0BE7-#x0BEF] | [#x0C66-#x0C6F] | [#x0CE6-#x0CEF] |
[#x0D66-#x0D6F] | [#x0E50-#x0E59] | [#x0ED0-#x0ED9] |
[#x0F20-#x0F29]
[89] Extender ::= #x00B7 | #x02D0 | #x02D1 | #x0387 | #x0640 |
#x0E46 | #x0EC6 | #x3005 | [#x3031-#x3035] | [#x309D-#x309E] |
[#x30FC-#x30FE]
The character classes defined here can be derived from the Unicode 2.0 character
database as follows:
Name start characters must have one of the categories Ll, Lu, Lo, Lt, Nl.
Name characters other than Name-start characters must have one of the
categories Mc, Me, Mn, Lm, or Nd.
Characters in the compatibility area (i.e. with character code greater than
#xF900 and less than #xFFFE) are not allowed in XML names.
Characters which have a font or compatibility decomposition (i.e. those with
a "compatibility formatting tag" in field 5 of the database -- marked by
field 5 beginning with a "<") are not allowed.
The following characters are treated as name-start characters rather than
name characters, because the property file classifies them as Alphabetic:
[#x02BB-#x02C1], #x0559, #x06E5, #x06E6.
Characters #x20DD-#x20E0 are excluded (in accordance with Unicode 2.0,
section 5.14).
Character #x00B7 is classified as an extender, because the property list so
identifies it.
Character #x0387 is added as a name character, because #x00B7 is its
canonical equivalent.
Characters ':' and '_' are allowed as name-start characters.
Characters '-' and '.' are allowed as name characters.
C XML and SGML (Non-Normative)
XML is designed to be a subset of SGML, in that every XML document should also
be a conforming SGML document. For a detailed comparison of the additional
restrictions that XML places on documents beyond those of SGML, see [Clark].
D Expansion of Entity and Character References (Non-Normative)
This appendix contains some examples illustrating the sequence of entity- and
character-reference recognition and expansion, as specified in 4.4 XML Processor
Treatment of Entities and References.
If the DTD contains the declaration
An ampersand (&) may be escaped
numerically (&#38;) or with a general entity
(&).
" >
then the XML processor will recognize the character references when it parses
the entity declaration, and resolve them before storing the following string as
the value of the entity "example":
An ampersand (&) may be escaped
numerically (&) or with a general entity
(&).
A reference in the document to "&example;" will cause the text to be reparsed,
at which time the start- and end-tags of the p element will be recognized and
the three references will be recognized and expanded, resulting in a p element
with the following content (all data, no delimiters or markup):
An ampersand (&) may be escaped
numerically (&) or with a general entity
(&).
A more complex example will illustrate the rules and their effects fully. In the
following example, the line numbers are solely for reference.
1
2
4
5 ' >
6 %xx;
7 ]>
8 This sample shows a &tricky; method.
This produces the following:
in line 4, the reference to character 37 is expanded immediately, and the
parameter entity "xx" is stored in the symbol table with the value "%zz;".
Since the replacement text is not rescanned, the reference to parameter
entity "zz" is not recognized. (And it would be an error if it were, since
"zz" is not yet declared.)
in line 5, the character reference "<" is expanded immediately and the
parameter entity "zz" is stored with the replacement text "", which is a well-formed entity declaration.
in line 6, the reference to "xx" is recognized, and the replacement text of
"xx" (namely "%zz;") is parsed. The reference to "zz" is recognized in its
turn, and its replacement text ("") is
parsed. The general entity "tricky" has now been declared, with the
replacement text "error-prone".
in line 8, the reference to the general entity "tricky" is recognized, and
it is expanded, so the full content of the test element is the
self-describing (and ungrammatical) string This sample shows a error-prone
method.
E Deterministic Content Models (Non-Normative)
As noted in 3.2.1 Element Content, it is required that content models in element
type declarations be deterministic. This requirement is for compatibility with
SGML (which calls deterministic content models "unambiguous"); XML processors
built using SGML systems may flag non-deterministic content models as errors.
For example, the content model ((b, c) | (b, d)) is non-deterministic, because
given an initial b the XML processor cannot know which b in the model is being
matched without looking ahead to see which element follows the b. In this case,
the two references to b can be collapsed into a single reference, making the
model read (b, (c | d)). An initial b now clearly matches only a single name in
the content model. The processor doesn't need to look ahead to see what follows;
either c or d would be accepted.
More formally: a finite state automaton may be constructed from the content
model using the standard algorithms, e.g. algorithm 3.5 in section 3.9 of Aho,
Sethi, and Ullman [Aho/Ullman]. In many such algorithms, a follow set is
constructed for each position in the regular expression (i.e., each leaf node in
the syntax tree for the regular expression); if any position has a follow set in
which more than one following position is labeled with the same element type
name, then the content model is in error and may be reported as an error.
Algorithms exist which allow many but not all non-deterministic content models
to be reduced automatically to equivalent deterministic models; see
Brüggemann-Klein 1991 [Brüggemann-Klein].
F Autodetection of Character Encodings (Non-Normative)
The XML encoding declaration functions as an internal label on each entity,
indicating which character encoding is in use. Before an XML processor can read
the internal label, however, it apparently has to know what character encoding
is in use--which is what the internal label is trying to indicate. In the
general case, this is a hopeless situation. It is not entirely hopeless in XML,
however, because XML limits the general case in two ways: each implementation is
assumed to support only a finite set of character encodings, and the XML
encoding declaration is restricted in position and content in order to make it
feasible to autodetect the character encoding in use in each entity in normal
cases. Also, in many cases other sources of information are available in
addition to the XML data stream itself. Two cases may be distinguished,
depending on whether the XML entity is presented to the processor without, or
with, any accompanying (external) information. We consider the first case first.
F.1 Detection Without External Encoding Information
Because each XML entity not accompanied by external encoding information and not
in UTF-8 or UTF-16 encoding must begin with an XML encoding declaration, in
which the first characters must be '