In article <_sqdne8dXo63cqncRVn-hw@g...>,
jmm-list-gn  <jmm-list.AXSPAMGN@s...> wrote:
% Esther wrote:
% > I've just been handed a spec prepared by one of our vendors that
% > includes instructions and samples like these:
% > 
% > "<difficulty_section> Tag
% > 
% > I wasn't aware this was possible, especially since nesting is allowed
% > in their model. Could someone please clarify for me if I'm missing one
% > of the finer points of XML, or are these people just idiots?
% > 
%    It certainly not valid XML. It is not even well-formed. This does not 
% mean a parser cannot parse the document; only that the document is poorly 
% created.

Conforming XML parsers are required to stop passing parsing information
to the application when they encounter well-formedness errors. The
reason for this is to prevent the problem with HTML, which is that
everyone has to be able to process garbage documents in order to
inter-operate with everyone else.

%    So they are not idiots, exactly. They just don't bother with validation.

It seems like they didn't bother using XML at all. To the OP, is this
supposed to be XML, or is it SGML? The kind of mark-up you describe is
quite common and perfectly legal in the SGML world.
-- 

Patrick TJ McPhee
East York  Canada
ptjm@i...