XMLWF(1)																  XMLWF(1)

NAME

       xmlwf - Determines if an XML document is well-formed

SYNOPSIS

       xmlwf [ -s]  [ -n]  [ -p]  [ -x]  [ -e encoding]  [ -w]	[ -d output-dir]  [ -c]  [ -m]	[ -r]  [ -t]  [ -v]  [ file ...]

DESCRIPTION

       xmlwf uses the Expat library to determine if an XML document is well-formed.  It is non-validating.

       If you do not specify any files on the command-line, and you have a recent version of xmlwf, the input file will be read from stdin.

WELL-FORMED DOCUMENTS
       A well-formed document must adhere to the following rules:

       o The file begins with an XML declaration.  For instance, <?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>.  NOTE: xmlwf does not currently check for
	 a valid XML declaration.

       o Every start tag is either empty (<tag/>) or has a corresponding end tag.

       o There is exactly one root element.  This element must contain all other elements in the document.  Only comments, white space,  and  pro-
	 cessing instructions may come after the close of the root element.

       o All elements nest properly.

       o All attribute values are enclosed in quotes (either single or double).

       If  the	document has a DTD, and it strictly complies with that DTD, then the document is also considered valid.  xmlwf is a non-validating
       parser -- it does not check the DTD.  However, it does support external entities (see the -x option).

OPTIONS

       When an option includes an argument, you may specify the argument either separate ("d output")  or  mashed  ("-doutput").   xmlwf  supports
       both.

       -c     If  the  input  file  is well-formed and xmlwf doesn't encounter any errors, the input file is simply copied to the output directory
	      unchanged.  This implies no namespaces (turns off -n) and requires -d to specify an output file.

       -d output-dir
	      Specifies a directory to contain transformed representations of the input files.	By default, -d outputs a canonical  representation
	      (described below).  You can select different output formats using -c and -m.

	      The  output  filenames will be exactly the same as the input filenames or "STDIN" if the input is coming from STDIN.  Therefore, you
	      must be careful that the output file does not go into the same directory as the input file.  Otherwise, xmlwf will delete the  input
	      file before it generates the output file (just like running cat < file > file in most shells).

	      Two  structurally  equivalent  XML documents have a byte-for-byte identical canonical XML representation.  Note that ignorable white
	      space  is  considered  significant  and  is  treated  equivalently  to  data.    More   on   canonical   XML   can   be	found	at
	      http://www.jclark.com/xml/canonxml.html .

       -e encoding
	      Specifies the character encoding for the document, overriding any document encoding declaration.	xmlwf has four built-in encodings:
	      US-ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16, and ISO-8859-1.	Also see the -w option.

       -m     Outputs some strange sort of XML file that completely describes the the input file, including character postitions.  Requires -d	to
	      specify an output file.

       -n     Turns on namespace processing.  (describe namespaces) -c disables namespaces.

       -p     Tells xmlwf to process external DTDs and parameter entities.

	      Normally xmlwf never parses parameter entities.  -p tells it to always parse them.  -p implies -x.

       -r     Normally	xmlwf  memory-maps  the  XML  file before parsing.  -r turns off memory-mapping and uses normal file IO calls instead.	Of
	      course, memory-mapping is automatically turned off when reading from STDIN.

       -s     Prints an error if the document is not standalone.  A document is standalone if it has no  external  subset  and	no  references	to
	      parameter entities.

       -t     Turns  on timings.  This tells Expat to parse the entire file, but not perform any processing.  This gives a fairly accurate idea of
	      the raw speed of Expat itself without client overhead.  -t turns off most of the output options (-d, -m -c, ...).

       -v     Prints the version of the Expat library being used, and then exits.

       -w     Enables Windows code pages.  Normally, xmlwf will throw an error if it runs across an encoding that it is  not  equipped	to  handle
	      itself.  With -w, xmlwf will try to use a Windows code page.  See also -e.

       -x     Turns on parsing external entities.

	      Non-validating parsers are not required to resolve external entities, or even expand entities at all.  Expat always expands internal
	      entities (?), but external entity parsing must be enabled explicitly.

	      External entities are simply entities that obtain their data from outside the XML file currently being parsed.

	      This is an example of an internal entity:

	      <!ENTITY vers '1.0.2'>

	      And here are some examples of external entities:

	      <!ENTITY header SYSTEM "header-&vers;.xml">  (parsed)
	      <!ENTITY logo SYSTEM "logo.png" PNG>	   (unparsed)

       --     For some reason, xmlwf specifically ignores "--" anywhere it appears on the command line.

       Older versions of xmlwf do not support reading from STDIN.

OUTPUT

       If an input file is not well-formed, xmlwf outputs a single line describing the problem to STDOUT.  If a file is well formed, xmlwf outputs
       nothing.  Note that the result code is not set.

BUGS

       According  to  the  W3C	standard, an XML file without a declaration at the beginning is not considered well-formed.  However, xmlwf allows
       this to pass.

       xmlwf returns a 0 - noerr result, even if the file is not well-formed.  There is no good way for a program to use xmlwf to quickly check  a
       file -- it must parse xmlwf's STDOUT.

       The errors should go to STDERR, not stdout.

       There should be a way to get -d to send its output to STDOUT rather than forcing the user to send it to a file.

       I have no idea why anyone would want to use the -d, -c and -m options.  If someone could explain it to me, I'd like to add this information
       to this manpage.

ALTERNATIVES

       Here are some XML validators on the web:

       http://www.hcrc.ed.ac.uk/~richard/xml-check.html
       http://www.stg.brown.edu/service/xmlvalid/
       http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/xml/code/xmlValidator.html
       http://www.xml.com/pub/a/tools/ruwf/check.html

								   22 April 2002							  XMLWF(1)