Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: File-tpye plug-in architecture for Arch?

[Charles Duffy]

On Mon, 2003-12-22 at 17:16, michael josenhans wrote:
> Any good XML patch should take the DTD into account when merging.

Much of the argument here is that knowing that the new document
validates is insufficient to know that the new document is semantically
valid (ie. that when loaded into the app which created the two documents
from which it was created, said app will represent a document that is in
fact The Right Thing).

Consider the case where an app loading a merged document presumes that
each style element will have a distinct "name" value, but where each
branch added a different style element with the same name; a DTD cannot
validate that this did not occur, and so may produce a document which
validates against the DTD but still crashes the app which created the
document.

> What you need here for XML files is:
> 
> xml-md5sum

Better approach: Normalize the trees, then use a regular plain-vanille
md5sum.