getCapabilities not valid XML (MSXML)

[Daniel Morissette]

Steven,

The EMPTY element declaration in the DOCTYPE was simply inspired from 
the example found in the spec itself (in Annex A.2 of WMS 1.1.1 and also 
present in  most/all previous revisions).

I'm no XML guru so I'm not sure what the best fix is, but once you find 
out I'd invite you to file a ticket documenting the original problem and 
the new format that makes MSXML and other parsers happy.

Daniel

Steven M. Ottens wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> My mapbuilder/openlayers application wasn't working on IE7, it 
> complained that the WMS getCapabilities doc generated by Mapserver 
> wasn't valid XML. I've finally tracked it down to the doctype declaration:
> Mapserver produces
> <?xml version='1.0' encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no" ?>
> <!DOCTYPE WMT_MS_Capabilities SYSTEM 
> "http://schemas.opengeospatial.net/wms/1.1.1/capabilities_1_1_1.dtd"
> [
> <!ELEMENT VendorSpecificCapabilities EMPTY>
> ]>  <!-- end of DOCTYPE declaration -->
> 
> The parser removes both the <?xml ..> tag and the <!DOCTYPE ..> tag from 
> the XML before parsing. So normally the to-be-parsed XML text starts with:
> <!-- end of DOCTYPE declaration -->
> Which is a valid piece of XML
> However MSXML apparently thinks that the closing > after EMPTY belongs 
> to the opening < before !DOCTYPE. So instead now the XML text starts with:
> ]>
> Which obviously isn't valid XML and MSXML fails.
> 
> So my questions:
> -Anyone else noticed this problem?
> -Why is there an (empty!) ELEMENT declaration within the DOCTYPE?
> -How can I remove this ELEMENT?
> 
> Regards,
> Steven


-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/