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6: .TH "XMLWF" "1" "24 January 2003" "" ""
7: .SH NAME
8: xmlwf \- Determines if an XML document is well-formed
9: .SH SYNOPSIS
10:
11: \fBxmlwf\fR [ \fB-s\fR] [ \fB-n\fR] [ \fB-p\fR] [ \fB-x\fR] [ \fB-e \fIencoding\fB\fR] [ \fB-w\fR] [ \fB-d \fIoutput-dir\fB\fR] [ \fB-c\fR] [ \fB-m\fR] [ \fB-r\fR] [ \fB-t\fR] [ \fB-v\fR] [ \fBfile ...\fR]
12:
13: .SH "DESCRIPTION"
14: .PP
15: \fBxmlwf\fR uses the Expat library to
16: determine if an XML document is well-formed. It is
17: non-validating.
18: .PP
19: If you do not specify any files on the command-line, and you
20: have a recent version of \fBxmlwf\fR, the
21: input file will be read from standard input.
22: .SH "WELL-FORMED DOCUMENTS"
23: .PP
24: A well-formed document must adhere to the
25: following rules:
26: .TP 0.2i
27: \(bu
28: The file begins with an XML declaration. For instance,
29: <?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>.
30: \fBNOTE:\fR
31: \fBxmlwf\fR does not currently
32: check for a valid XML declaration.
33: .TP 0.2i
34: \(bu
35: Every start tag is either empty (<tag/>)
36: or has a corresponding end tag.
37: .TP 0.2i
38: \(bu
39: There is exactly one root element. This element must contain
40: all other elements in the document. Only comments, white
41: space, and processing instructions may come after the close
42: of the root element.
43: .TP 0.2i
44: \(bu
45: All elements nest properly.
46: .TP 0.2i
47: \(bu
48: All attribute values are enclosed in quotes (either single
49: or double).
50: .PP
51: If the document has a DTD, and it strictly complies with that
52: DTD, then the document is also considered \fBvalid\fR.
53: \fBxmlwf\fR is a non-validating parser --
54: it does not check the DTD. However, it does support
55: external entities (see the \fB-x\fR option).
56: .SH "OPTIONS"
57: .PP
58: When an option includes an argument, you may specify the argument either
59: separately ("\fB-d\fR output") or concatenated with the
60: option ("\fB-d\fRoutput"). \fBxmlwf\fR
61: supports both.
62: .TP
63: \fB-c\fR
64: If the input file is well-formed and \fBxmlwf\fR
65: doesn't encounter any errors, the input file is simply copied to
66: the output directory unchanged.
67: This implies no namespaces (turns off \fB-n\fR) and
68: requires \fB-d\fR to specify an output file.
69: .TP
70: \fB-d output-dir\fR
71: Specifies a directory to contain transformed
72: representations of the input files.
73: By default, \fB-d\fR outputs a canonical representation
74: (described below).
75: You can select different output formats using \fB-c\fR
76: and \fB-m\fR.
77:
78: The output filenames will
79: be exactly the same as the input filenames or "STDIN" if the input is
80: coming from standard input. Therefore, you must be careful that the
81: output file does not go into the same directory as the input
82: file. Otherwise, \fBxmlwf\fR will delete the
83: input file before it generates the output file (just like running
84: cat < file > file in most shells).
85:
86: Two structurally equivalent XML documents have a byte-for-byte
87: identical canonical XML representation.
88: Note that ignorable white space is considered significant and
89: is treated equivalently to data.
90: More on canonical XML can be found at
91: http://www.jclark.com/xml/canonxml.html .
92: .TP
93: \fB-e encoding\fR
94: Specifies the character encoding for the document, overriding
95: any document encoding declaration. \fBxmlwf\fR
96: supports four built-in encodings:
97: US-ASCII,
98: UTF-8,
99: UTF-16, and
100: ISO-8859-1.
101: Also see the \fB-w\fR option.
102: .TP
103: \fB-m\fR
104: Outputs some strange sort of XML file that completely
105: describes the input file, including character positions.
106: Requires \fB-d\fR to specify an output file.
107: .TP
108: \fB-n\fR
109: Turns on namespace processing. (describe namespaces)
110: \fB-c\fR disables namespaces.
111: .TP
112: \fB-p\fR
113: Tells xmlwf to process external DTDs and parameter
114: entities.
115:
116: Normally \fBxmlwf\fR never parses parameter
117: entities. \fB-p\fR tells it to always parse them.
118: \fB-p\fR implies \fB-x\fR.
119: .TP
120: \fB-r\fR
121: Normally \fBxmlwf\fR memory-maps the XML file
122: before parsing; this can result in faster parsing on many
123: platforms.
124: \fB-r\fR turns off memory-mapping and uses normal file
125: IO calls instead.
126: Of course, memory-mapping is automatically turned off
127: when reading from standard input.
128:
129: Use of memory-mapping can cause some platforms to report
130: substantially higher memory usage for
131: \fBxmlwf\fR, but this appears to be a matter of
132: the operating system reporting memory in a strange way; there is
133: not a leak in \fBxmlwf\fR.
134: .TP
135: \fB-s\fR
136: Prints an error if the document is not standalone.
137: A document is standalone if it has no external subset and no
138: references to parameter entities.
139: .TP
140: \fB-t\fR
141: Turns on timings. This tells Expat to parse the entire file,
142: but not perform any processing.
143: This gives a fairly accurate idea of the raw speed of Expat itself
144: without client overhead.
145: \fB-t\fR turns off most of the output options
146: (\fB-d\fR, \fB-m\fR, \fB-c\fR,
147: \&...).
148: .TP
149: \fB-v\fR
150: Prints the version of the Expat library being used, including some
151: information on the compile-time configuration of the library, and
152: then exits.
153: .TP
154: \fB-w\fR
155: Enables support for Windows code pages.
156: Normally, \fBxmlwf\fR will throw an error if it
157: runs across an encoding that it is not equipped to handle itself. With
158: \fB-w\fR, xmlwf will try to use a Windows code
159: page. See also \fB-e\fR.
160: .TP
161: \fB-x\fR
162: Turns on parsing external entities.
163:
164: Non-validating parsers are not required to resolve external
165: entities, or even expand entities at all.
166: Expat always expands internal entities (?),
167: but external entity parsing must be enabled explicitly.
168:
169: External entities are simply entities that obtain their
170: data from outside the XML file currently being parsed.
171:
172: This is an example of an internal entity:
173:
174: .nf
175: <!ENTITY vers '1.0.2'>
176: .fi
177:
178: And here are some examples of external entities:
179:
180: .nf
181: <!ENTITY header SYSTEM "header-&vers;.xml"> (parsed)
182: <!ENTITY logo SYSTEM "logo.png" PNG> (unparsed)
183: .fi
184: .TP
185: \fB--\fR
186: (Two hyphens.)
187: Terminates the list of options. This is only needed if a filename
188: starts with a hyphen. For example:
189:
190: .nf
191: xmlwf -- -myfile.xml
192: .fi
193:
194: will run \fBxmlwf\fR on the file
195: \fI-myfile.xml\fR.
196: .PP
197: Older versions of \fBxmlwf\fR do not support
198: reading from standard input.
199: .SH "OUTPUT"
200: .PP
201: If an input file is not well-formed,
202: \fBxmlwf\fR prints a single line describing
203: the problem to standard output. If a file is well formed,
204: \fBxmlwf\fR outputs nothing.
205: Note that the result code is \fBnot\fR set.
206: .SH "BUGS"
207: .PP
208: According to the W3C standard, an XML file without a
209: declaration at the beginning is not considered well-formed.
210: However, \fBxmlwf\fR allows this to pass.
211: .PP
212: \fBxmlwf\fR returns a 0 - noerr result,
213: even if the file is not well-formed. There is no good way for
214: a program to use \fBxmlwf\fR to quickly
215: check a file -- it must parse \fBxmlwf\fR's
216: standard output.
217: .PP
218: The errors should go to standard error, not standard output.
219: .PP
220: There should be a way to get \fB-d\fR to send its
221: output to standard output rather than forcing the user to send
222: it to a file.
223: .PP
224: I have no idea why anyone would want to use the
225: \fB-d\fR, \fB-c\fR, and
226: \fB-m\fR options. If someone could explain it to
227: me, I'd like to add this information to this manpage.
228: .SH "ALTERNATIVES"
229: .PP
230: Here are some XML validators on the web:
231:
232: .nf
233: http://www.hcrc.ed.ac.uk/~richard/xml-check.html
234: http://www.stg.brown.edu/service/xmlvalid/
235: http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/xml/code/xmlValidator.html
236: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/tools/ruwf/check.html
237: .fi
238: .SH "SEE ALSO"
239: .PP
240:
241: .nf
242: The Expat home page: http://www.libexpat.org/
243: The W3 XML specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml
244: .fi
245: .SH "AUTHOR"
246: .PP
247: This manual page was written by Scott Bronson <bronson@rinspin.com> for
248: the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). Permission is
249: granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
250: the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
251: License, Version 1.1.
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