7.3. The DOCTYPE Declaration

7.3. The DOCTYPE Declaration
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The beginning of each document can specify the name of the DTD to which the document conforms. This DOCTYPE declaration is used by XML parsers to identify the DTD and ensure that the document does conform to it.

A typical declaration for a document written to conform with version 1.0 of the XHTML DTD looks like this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

That line contains a number of different components.

<!

The indicator shows this is an XML declaration.

DOCTYPE

Shows that this is an XML declaration of the document type.

html

Names the first element that will appear in the document.

PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"

Lists the Formal Public Identifier (FPI) for the DTD to which this document conforms. The XML parser uses this to find the correct DTD when processing this document.

PUBLIC is not a part of the FPI, but indicates to the XML processor how to find the DTD referenced in the FPI. Other ways of telling the XML parser how to find the DTD are shown later.

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"

A local filename or a URL to find the DTD.

>

Ends the declaration and returns to the document.

7.3.1. Formal Public Identifiers (FPIs)

Note:

It is not necessary to know this, but it is useful background, and might help debug problems when the XML processor can not locate the DTD.

FPIs must follow a specific syntax:

"Owner//Keyword Description//Language"

Owner

The owner of the FPI.

The beginning of the string identifies the owner of the FPI. For example, the FPI "ISO 8879:1986//ENTITIES Greek Symbols//EN" lists ISO 8879:1986 as being the owner for the set of entities for Greek symbols. ISO 8879:1986 is the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) number for the SGML standard, the predecessor (and a superset) of XML.

Otherwise, this string will either look like -//Owner or +//Owner (notice the only difference is the leading + or -).

If the string starts with - then the owner information is unregistered, with a + identifying it as registered.

ISO 9070:1991 defines how registered names are generated. It might be derived from the number of an ISO publication, an ISBN code, or an organization code assigned according to ISO 6523. Additionally, a registration authority could be created in order to assign registered names. The ISO council delegated this to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

Because the FreeBSD Project has not been registered, the owner string is -//FreeBSD. As seen in the example, the W3C are not a registered owner either.

Keyword

There are several keywords that indicate the type of information in the file. Some of the most common keywords are DTD, ELEMENT, ENTITIES, and TEXT. DTD is used only for DTD files, ELEMENT is usually used for DTD fragments that contain only entity or element declarations. TEXT is used for XML content (text and tags).

Description

Any description can be given for the contents of this file. This may include version numbers or any short text that is meaningful and unique for the XML system.

Language

An ISO two-character code that identifies the native language for the file. EN is used for English.

7.3.1.1. `catalog` Files

With the syntax above, an XML processor needs to have some way of turning the FPI into the name of the file containing the DTD. A catalog file (typically called catalog) contains lines that map FPIs to filenames. For example, if the catalog file contained the line:

PUBLIC  "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"             "1.0/transitional.dtd"

The XML processor knows that the DTD is called transitional.dtd in the 1.0 subdirectory of the directory that held catalog.

Examine the contents of /usr/local/share/xml/dtd/xhtml/catalog.xml. This is the catalog file for the XHTML DTDs that were installed as part of the textproc/docproj port.

7.3.2. Alternatives to FPIs

Instead of using an FPI to indicate the DTD to which the document conforms (and therefore, which file on the system contains the DTD), the filename can be explicitly specified.

The syntax is slightly different:

<!DOCTYPE html SYSTEM "/path/to/file.dtd">

The SYSTEM keyword indicates that the XML processor should locate the DTD in a system specific fashion. This typically (but not always) means the DTD will be provided as a filename.

Using FPIs is preferred for reasons of portability. If the SYSTEM identifier is used, then the DTD must be provided and kept in the same location for everyone.

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