Re: ATTSPLEN?

Paul Grosso (pbg@texcel.no)
Tue, 3 Jan 95 09:11:23 EST

> From: Paul Burchard <burchard@horizon.math.utah.edu>
>
> I'd understood that the maximum allowable length of certain
> attributes (such as <A HREF="..."> and <INPUT VALUE="...">) were
> governed by SGML's LITLEN parameter. However, when I submitted the
> document
>
> http://www.geom.umn.edu/docs/burchard/test.html
>
> which contains an INPUT VALUE of length 1008 (< LITLEN = 1024) to
> Dan's validator, it complained that I was exceeding ATTSPLEN:
>
> sgmls: SGML error at -, line 51 at """:
> Normalized attribute specification length over ATTSPLEN limit
> sgmls: SGML error at -, line 52 at ">":
> Start-tag length exceeds TAGLEN limit; parsed correctly
>
> Does the current value of ATTSPLEN conflict with the intent of
> LITLEN? Or am I doing something wrong?

LITLEN gives the length limit for each parameter literal and attribute
value literal. For example, the (undelimited) length of the value
(i.e., the right hand side) of the HREF or VALUE attribute.

ATTSPLEN gives the length limit for the (normalized) length of a start
tag's attribute specification list which is the sum of all left hand
sides, value indicators (equal signs in the RCS), right hand sides, and
delimiting space characters of all attribute specifications for a given
start tag instance. I didn't look at your particular document, but I
assume this should explain the situation.

TAGLEN gives the length limit of the (undelimited) start tag which
includes above and beyond the attribute specification list, the gi
and--I believe, though it isn't explicit where I looked in 8879--the
entire *unnormalized* text given between the tag open/close delimiters
in place of the normalized attribute specification list.

Note that it doesn't make sense to expect to be able to enter large
values for attributes unless one increases all three of the above quantities.

paul

Paul Grosso
VP Research Chief Technical Officer
ArborText, Inc. SGML Open

Email: paul@arbortext.com
or pbg@texcel.no