Acid test environment for entities

Very few XML processors correctly handle external entities. XP by James Clark found at http://www.jclark.com/xml/xp was the first, and for a long time the only, XML processor to do so. Now more and more XML processors are handling these properly as a result of testing this acid test environment.

The package of files is found in acid-20030730.zip.

For example, just run your XML processor with any of acid.xml, aciddtd.xml, or acid-fo.xsl files. Other tests are included in the ZIP.

The file acid-fo.xsl exists so you can test either or both of an XSLT processor or an XSL-FO processor.

Here is a typical result of a non-conforming XML processor, followed by running the XT XSLT processor that contains the conforming XP XML processor:

T:\acid>xml acid.xml
Processing: 'acid.xml' for XML validation errors (-w for wellformedness)

Fatal Error at (file acid.ent, line 2, char 4): Conditional section in 
internal subset

T:\acid>xml aciddtd.xml
Processing: 'aciddtd.xml' for XML validation errors (-w for wellformedness)

Fatal Error at (file acid.ent, line 2, char 4): Conditional section in 
internal subset

T:\acid>xt acid.xml acid-fo.xsl
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root font-family="Times" font-size="20pt" 
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">
<layout-master-set>
<simple-page-master master-name="frame" page-height="297mm" 
page-width="210mm" margin-top="20mm" margin-bottom="20mm" 
margin-left="20mm" margin-right="20mm">
<region-body region-name="frame-body"/>
</simple-page-master>
</layout-master-set>
<page-sequence master-name="frame">
<flow flow-name="frame-body">
<block>This is a test</block>
</flow>
</page-sequence>
</root>

T:\acid>xt aciddtd.xml acid-fo.xsl
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root font-family="Times" font-size="20pt" 
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">
<layout-master-set>
<simple-page-master master-name="frame" page-height="297mm" 
page-width="210mm" margin-top="20mm" margin-bottom="20mm" 
margin-left="20mm" margin-right="20mm">
<region-body region-name="frame-body"/>
</simple-page-master>
</layout-master-set>
<page-sequence master-name="frame">
<flow flow-name="frame-body">
<block>This is a test</block>
</flow>
</page-sequence>
</root>

T:\acid>

Note how the XML processor above complains, but the XT processor doesn't complain.

Vendors I've shared this with have repeatedly concurred that these XML files I've created are well-formed and that all conformant XML processors should accept them.

As a favour, we would appreciate hearing from vendors who have detected and resolved problems using this acid test. We are pleased to have been helping others with this in the past.