Hi Joe, I am well aware that multiple top-level elements are not allowed. I have been using XML for about 2 years or so now and thought I was quite familiar with it until a colleague asked why IE didn't break when he gave the sample document I gave. I had read the W3C Recommendation several times before and I always read the well-formedness definition the same way: no part of the *unique* root element may appear anywhere else in the document - the root element's name being a part of that element. If it's not part of the element, what is an XML element without a name?
So I was compelled to write to the most knowledgeable group I know on the matter (xerces-j-user and xerces-j-dev) to get a definitive answer which I've gotten. I'm fairly certain that in the past I've encountered DTDs that did not allow the root element to exist anywhere within the document and that only reaffirmed my understanding that a single document element must exist that contains all other elements and cannot exist anywhere within itself. Brion -----Original Message----- From: Joseph Kesselman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2003 9:31 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: basic XML question re: Xerces What is "not allowed" is for there to be more than one top-level element: <foo/> <bar/> (with or without additional content within those elements, and no matter what their names are), or indeed *anything* other than the XML Declaration, doctype declaration, comments, PI's, and whitespace outside that one top-level element. A good XML tutorial *should* make this clear. If yours didn't, I'd suggest switching books. ______________________________________ Joe Kesselman / IBM Research --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
