Getting started

Behaviour

Reporting the DOCTYPE

By default, and with no options specified, the tool emits the document passed in verbatim to standard output, encoded as UTF-8. This can be turned off by specifying option -q.

An XML report of any errors encountered by the (non-validating) parser, together with details of any DOCTYPE declaration, is emitted to standard error.

The report takes this format:

<report uri='my-file.xml'>
<doctype root='foo' systemID='bar' publicID='blort'/>
</report>

The <doctype> attributes occur only if the corresponding information is present in the DOCTYPE declaration. If there is no DOCTYPE declaration, <doctype> is omitted from the report.

Any errors appear, for example, as:

<report uri='my-file.xml'>
<error>my-file.xml:1:0: no element found</error>
</report>

Note that if a parseable DOCTYPE declaration is encountered and the overall document is not well-formed, the declaration will still be reported, along with the well-formedness error.

Amending the DOCTYPE

Other options amend the DOCTYPE declaration in the emitted document as follows. Options may be combined (except for combinations which would both specify and omit SYSTEM and PUBLIC identifiers).

Omit PUBLIC identifier

Specifying option -P changes e.g. this:

<!DOCTYPE foo PUBLIC "somePublicID" "my.dtd">... 

to this:

<!DOCTYPE foo SYSTEM "my.dtd">... 

Change PUBLIC identifier

Specifying option -p<value> changes e.g. this:

<!DOCTYPE foo PUBLIC "somePublicID" "my.dtd">... 

to this:

<!DOCTYPE foo PUBLIC "otherPublicID" "my.dtd">... 

Change root element name

Specifying option -r<value> changes e.g. this:

<!DOCTYPE foo ...>

to this:

<!DOCTYPE bar ...>

Omit SYSTEM and PUBLIC identifiers

Specifying option -S changes e.g. this:

<!DOCTYPE foo PUBLIC "somePublicID" "my.dtd">... 

to this:

<!DOCTYPE foo>... 

Change SYSTEM identifier

Specifying option -s<value> changes e.g. this:

<!DOCTYPE foo SYSTEM "my.dtd">... 

to this:

<!DOCTYPE foo SYSTEM "your.dtd">... 

Arguments containing spaces must be escaped in the usual way at the command line.

N.B. If the DOCTYPE declaration is amended by the options specified, then the resulting report features the updated values, rather than those found in the original document.

Internal subset

Currently, the internal subset is processed and any entities resolved in the resulting document, but is not preserved lexically in the output.

IMPORTANT

The application makes no attempt to check whether values passed in would result in well-formed output. Non-well-formed input will be emitted as non-well-formed output.