SAX parser doesn't report IDREF type

Question

I have been trying to create my first DTD:
<!ELEMENT Network (Node+, Link*)>
<!ELEMENT Node EMPTY>
<!ATTLIST Node
ID ID #REQUIRED
title CDATA #IMPLIED>
<!ELEMENT Link EMPTY>
<!ATTLIST Link
source IDREF #REQUIRED
dest IDREF #REQUIRED
title CDATA #IMPLIED>
and would expect that the source and dest attributes of the
Link element would have the type IDREF when being parsed with
the SAX parser. Using the SAXSample.java provided I get the
following output for a test network:
StartElement:Network
IgnorableWhiteSpace
StartElement:Node
ID(ID)=node1
title(CDATA)=test node
EndElement:Node
IgnorableWhiteSpace
StartElement:Node
ID(ID)=node2
title(CDATA)=another node
EndElement:Node
IgnorableWhiteSpace
StartElement:Link
source(CDATA)=node2
dest(CDATA)=node1
EndElement:Link
IgnorableWhiteSpace
StartElement:Link
source(CDATA)=node1
dest(CDATA)=node2
EndElement:Link
IgnorableWhiteSpace
EndElement:Network
This clearly shows source and dest reported as CDATA type. Not
exactly what's in the DTD.
Is this an undocumented feature (a.k.a. bug?)
Regards,
Gary Howard.
Smart Network Technology,
Nortel Networks, UK
null

Answer 1

Thanks for the replies, but I don't think we are quite connecting. I do eventually want to be able to validate an XML file against a schema (which I can't do either), but first I want to be able to validate the schema file itself; i.e. to confirm that the schema I designed is a valid schema file. As I understand it, it should be possible to tell the parser that the schema to validate against is the "schema for writing schemas", http://www.w3.org/Schema/schema.xsd (or whatever it is). That's where I'm getting stuck, that the parser doesn't recognize the elements for actually defining a schema.