Home / Computers / Internet

What are well formed XML documents?

Though there are many places where you can run your code together without encountering errors, it tends to make it more difficult to troubleshoot or modify your code later (and makes it extremely difficult for someone else to do anything with your code!)  Whenever possible, you should use appropriate white space and indentation to make your code more easily readable.

When creating a well-formed XML document, you don’t need to use DTD’s… the elements are defined by their usage, not by a set of pre-made rules that you declare early in the file.  Stylesheets are used to help to define the elements, and are used to format the final work.

The early work that you did with stylesheets and XML documents was an example of creating a well-formed XML document.  Open up your editor and go through the same process, but talk about something other than just Tooter and Shade this time.  The stylesheet reference needs to be there, but it doesn’t need to be an actual stylesheet at this point.

Your finished document might look a little something like this:

            <?xml version=”1.0”?>

            <?xml-stylesheet type=”text/css” href=”dogs.css”?>

            <dogs_info>

                        <dogs>Tamerlane, Shadow, and Jake are wonderful dogs!</dogs>

                        <neighbor_dogs>Of course, Lucy and Sarah are good dogs, too.</neighbor_dogs>

            </dogs_info>

All of the defining characteristics of the elements should be defined in dogs.css, just as they were when dealing with out cat examples.