[XML-SIG] DOCTYPEs question with 4DOM (4DOM bug?)

[Derek Fountain]

> PyXML-0.8.3 on SUSE-9.1. If you didn't serialize anything, how are you
> seeing the system and public IDs?
>
> I'm totally confused. It seems the only way to get a DOCTYPE with the
> correct root element and no SYSTEM or PUBLIC ids is to provide a non blank
> PUBLIC id:
>
> docType =  implementation.createDocumentType( None, "xxx", None )
> document = implementation.createDocument( None, "test", docType )
>
> which gives:
>
> <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
> <!DOCTYPE test>
> <test>
> ...
>
> The "xxx" seems to be ignored, but passing None or a blank string in its
> place means the serialisation doesn't produce a DOCTYPE line at all.

Replying to myself, it seems to be a problem specific to 4DOM. The serialiser 
in dom/ext/Printer.py is quite clear:

    def visitDocumentType(self, doctype):
        if not doctype.systemId and not doctype.publicId: return

Both the sax/saxutils.py serialiser and the dom/minidom.py serialiser print 
the "<DOCTYPE" part of the line before considering if a system or public id 
is known about.

That visitDocumentType() method is pretty straightforward, but it doesn't look 
right. The XML-1.1 spec, which I'm not really familiar with, but which isn't 
too hard to read, seems to say that a doctype with neither an External ID nor 
an internal subset is valid, so shouldn't the serialiser be able to produce 
it?

/me remains puzzled... :o)

-- 
> eatapple
core dump