src/expat/doc/xmlwf.1

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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.