XML Companion, The, Third Edition

Reading XML

While software can be used to write XML data, software is always required to read it. XML markup is never intended to be viewed by humans, except in extreme circumstances, such as to correct an invalid file. Unfortunately, reading XML is a much more difficult task than writing it.

Reading XML

Reading an XML document can be complicated by a number of issues and features of the language. The various ways in which whitespace can be used to format the data file may cause problems of interpretation. It may be necessary for entities to replace all references to them, and for attribute values to be processed. Finally, the DTD may need to be processed, either to add default information, or to compare against the document instance in order ...