Re: XML Declaration

Jonas Sicking wrote:

> bruno vernay wrote:
> 
>> Dirty hack :
>>     var piElem = doc.createProcessingInstruction("xml", "version='1.0'
>> encoding='UTF8'");
> 
> 
>>  - a XML Declaration is not a Processing Instruction
>> Real dirty ...
> 
> 
> Yeah, it is in fact so dirty that it should not work. Could you file a 
> bug in bugzilla about that and post the bug number here.


Where is the bug in your view, should the DOM not allow creating such a 
processing instruction or should the serializer bark at that processing 
instruction when serializing the document?

Unfortunately the DOM in W3C DOM Level 2 for createProcessingInstruction 
is not too specific on what kind of target arguments should throw 
errors. <http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Core/core.html#i-Document> says:
   "Exceptions
    DOMException
     INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified target contains an 
illegal character."

DOM Level 3 (although Mozilla does not support much of that so far) is a 
bit more specific. 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core/core.html#ID-135944439> says:
   "Exceptions
    DOMException
      INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified target is not an 
XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the 
Document.xmlVersion attribute."

But even with that if we look at <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#NT-Name> 
there are no restrictions for XML names itself to be e.g. "xml".

Only <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-pi> clearly excludes e.g. "xml" 
or "XML" as target names for processing instructions but there is 
nothing in the DOM spec saying that createProcessingInstruction should 
implement that rule.

I have made a test case here:
<http://home.arcor.de/martin.honnen/mozillaBugs/domLevel2/CreateXMLDeclarationAsProcessingInstruction1.html>
It is easy filing a bug with that but I am not sure about the component, 
i.e. DOM with createProcessingInstruction or XML with XMLSerializer.

None of the other DOM implementations I have tested (the above test case 
with IE 6 and MSXML, with Opera 8.5 and Opera 9 Preview; a short Java 
test program using the built-in DOM in Java 1.4 and 1.5) throw an error 
on createProcessingInstruction with target "xml".

-- 

	Martin Honnen
	http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/