Question on catalog.xsd in xml-resolver 1.2

[David M Williams]

I've recently started using Xerces 2.9.0, which has xml-commons-resolver-1_2

It has a catalog.xsd file, in org.apache.xml.resolver.etc

This schema doesn't validate, even by Xerces 2.9 itself!!??

The schema has

  <xs:simpleType name='pubIdChars'>
    <!-- A string of the characters defined as pubIdChar in production 13
         of the Second Edition of the XML 1.0 Recommendation. Does not include
         the whitespace characters because they're normalized by XML parsing. -->
    <xs:restriction base='xs:string'>
      <xs:pattern value="[a-zA-Z0-9-'()+,./:=?;!*#@$_%]*"/>
    </xs:restriction>
  </xs:simpleType>


But the validator says the pattern value should be

    <xs:pattern value="[a-zA-Z0-9\-'()+,./:=?;!*#@$_%]*"/>

That is, have an escaped '-' character where it's used literally.
Some googling around implied the parentheses '(' and ')' should also be escaped, giving

      <xs:pattern value="[a-zA-Z0-9\-'\(\)+,./:=?;!*#@$_%]*"/>


So ... I'm curious, is this a simple bug and the file that's being distributed should be fixed?
Or, is there some complex special case here where is doesn't matter? Or that is should be escaped for
one type of context or processing but not escaped for another?

I don't know of any cases of the resolving functionality actually failing because of this ... but,
seems it should shipped in a valid form?

Thanks for any education/insight you can give me.

[Michael Glavassevich-3]

Hi David,

Looks like the schema [1] in the XML Catalogs 1.1 spec has the correct
escaping. I have no idea where the currently distributed catalog.xsd [2]
came from but indeed it isn't valid.

Thanks.

[1]
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/14809/xml-catalogs.html#a.w3cxmlschema
[2]
http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/xml/commons/trunk/java/etc/catalog.xsd?view=log

Michael Glavassevich
XML Parser Development
IBM Toronto Lab
E-mail: mrglavas@...
E-mail: mrglavas@...

David M Williams <david_williams@...> wrote on 12/21/2007 03:31:06
AM:

> I've recently started using Xerces 2.9.0, which has
xml-commons-resolver-1_2
>
> It has a catalog.xsd file, in org.apache.xml.resolver.etc
>
> This schema doesn't validate, even by Xerces 2.9 itself!!??
>
> The schema has
>
>   <xs:simpleType name='pubIdChars'>
>     <!-- A string of the characters defined as pubIdChar in production 13

>          of the Second Edition of the XML 1.0 Recommendation. Does not
include

>          the whitespace characters because they're normalized by XML
> parsing. -->
>     <xs:restriction base='xs:string'>
>       <xs:pattern value="[a-zA-Z0-9-'()+,./:=?;!*#@$_%]*"/>
>     </xs:restriction>
>   </xs:simpleType>
>
>
> But the validator says the pattern value should be
>
>     <xs:pattern value="[a-zA-Z0-9\-'()+,./:=?;!*#@$_%]*"/>
>
> That is, have an escaped '-' character where it's used literally.
> Some googling around implied the parentheses '(' and ')' should also
> be escaped, giving
>
>       <xs:pattern value="[a-zA-Z0-9\-'\(\)+,./:=?;!*#@$_%]*"/>
>
>
> So ... I'm curious, is this a simple bug and the file that's being
> distributed should be fixed?
> Or, is there some complex special case here where is doesn't matter?
> Or that is should be escaped for
> one type of context or processing but not escaped for another?
>
> I don't know of any cases of the resolving functionality actually
> failing because of this ... but,
> seems it should shipped in a valid form?
>
> Thanks for any education/insight you can give me.