Closed Bug 488337 Opened 16 years ago Closed 8 years ago

whitespace before <?xml makes parser barf - interop issue

Categories

(Core :: XML, defect)

Product:
Core
Component:
XML
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED INVALID

People

(Reporter: zwol, Unassigned)

Details

If a document served with an XML content-type, that begins with has any whitespace at the beginning of the document, before the <?xml version="1.0">, the parser barfs: e.g. if I create a.html like this ---- <?xml version="1.0"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"></html> ---- I get this: XML Parsing Error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity Location: file:///tmp/a.xhtml Line Number 1, Column 2: <?xml version="1.0"?> -^ I recognize that the XML 'document' production does not permit anything before the leading <?; however, I think this is taking draconian error handling to the absurd extreme, and for interoperability's sake, the rule should be relaxed to discard leading white space. [Opera also objects to this construction, but IE doesn't.] Note that to avoid this with XML generated by server-side PHP, one has to make sure that all PHP files that might be included prior to the point in the driver file that generates the XML declaration do not *end* with a newline. This is contrary to standard practice for text files; it is difficult or even impossible to do in some text editors, and version control systems also don't like it.
This is just how XML works.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 8 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
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