Re: [xml-dev] XML Parsing

From: "Michael Kay" <>
 
> It very rarely makes sense to do XML validation on an XSLT stylesheet. It's
> hard to define a DTD because the vocabulary is variable, and the XSLT
> processor will do far more thorough validation than the XML parser can do.
 
There is a RELAX NG schema for XSLT, which lets you validate the xslt:
parts of an XSLT stylesheet to a good extent.  It is not as good as an
XSLT-specific validator, but pretty good. 

It should be possible to make a transformation on a RELAX NG schema
for the output document, so that it becomes xslt: aware. For example,
so that if there is a required attribute of x, it will be satisfied either
by the presence of x or by the presence of any xslt: namespace
child.  This would not give spurious validation errors, though it is weak.

B.t.w., I will be giving a talk on various kinds of validation like this
at XML 2002 Europe "When well-formedness is too much and
validity is not enough". Please come along!

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe