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  standard
       input.

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

       o The  file  begins  with an XML declaration.  For instance, <?xml ver-

	 sion="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  dou-

	 ble).

       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  separately  ("-d  output")  or  concatenated  with  the	option
       ("-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 representa-
	      tion (described below).  You can select different output formats
	      using -c and -m.

	      The output filenames will be exactly the same as the input file-
	      names  or  "STDIN"  if  the input is coming from standard input.
	      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 equiva-
	      lently  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 supports 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  input  file, including character positions.	Requires -d to
	      specify an output file.

       -n     Turns on namespace processing.  (describe  namespaces)  -c  dis-
	      ables 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; this can
	      result  in  faster parsing on many platforms.  -r turns off mem-
	      ory-mapping and uses normal file IO calls instead.   Of  course,
	      memory-mapping  is  automatically  turned  off when reading from
	      standard input.

	      Use of memory-mapping can cause some platforms  to  report  sub-
	      stantially higher memory usage for xmlwf, but this appears to be
	      a matter of the operating system reporting memory in  a  strange
	      way; there is not a leak in xmlwf.

       -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,  including
	      some  information  on  the  compile-time	configuration  of  the
	      library, and then exits.

       -w     Enables support for 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)

       --     (Two  hyphens.)	Terminates  the list of options.  This is only
	      needed if a filename starts with a hyphen.  For example:

	      xmlwf -- -myfile.xml

	      will run xmlwf on the file -myfile.xml.

       Older versions of xmlwf do not support reading from standard input.

OUTPUT
       If an input file  is  not  well-formed,	xmlwf  prints  a  single  line
       describing  the	problem to standard output.  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 standard output.

       The errors should go to standard error, not standard output.

       There should be a way to get -d to send its output to  standard	output
       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


SEE ALSO
       The Expat home page:	   http://www.libexpat.org/

       The W3 XML specification:   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml

AUTHOR
       This manual page was written by Scott Bronson <bronson@rinspin.com> for
       the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).  Permission is
       granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms
       of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1.



				24 January 2003 		      XMLWF(1)

NAME - SYNOPSIS - DESCRIPTION - WELL-FORMED DOCUMENTS - OPTIONS - OUTPUT - 
BUGS - ALTERNATIVES - SEE ALSO - AUTHOR -