PureXML/docs/xsts-deviations.md

XSTS deviation worklist

This partitions the W3C XML Schema Test Suite (XSTS, 2006-11-06 archive) deviations by root cause and kind, so the burn-down is driven by understanding each rule rather than by chasing the count. First measured 2026-06-13; baselined and ratcheted in Tests/XSTSSuiteTests.swift.

What the oracle measures

The runner compares PureXML's verdict to the suite's expected validity. A schema is "accepted" iff Schema.Document(source) does not throw; an instance is "accepted" iff validate returns no errors. The four counts:

Kind	Meaning	Direction
valid schema rejected	legal XSD that PureXML refused to compile	too strict
invalid schema accepted	illegal XSD that PureXML compiled anyway	too lenient
valid instance rejected	valid document PureXML flagged	too strict
invalid instance accepted	invalid document PureXML passed	too lenient

The oracle is binary and coarse: "invalid schema accepted" conflates we have a bug with we do not implement this validity constraint by design. The point of this document is to separate those.

Only tests with a settled expectation are counted. The suite marks contested entries <current status="queried"> (disputed in W3C Bugzilla, the expected validity itself in question, e.g. \p{Lu}* over two uppercase letters one of which is an astral math capital); agreeing or disagreeing with a contested expectation is not meaningful, so the runner skips them. Excluding the queried entries removed about 70 apparent deviations that were never bugs.

Baseline (settled expectations; synced 2026-06-16)

Kind	First measurement	Now
valid schema rejected	75	1
invalid schema accepted	2467	266
valid instance rejected	604	171
invalid instance accepted	582	155

Counts are against settled W3C expectations (queried/disputed entries excluded).

XSTS is a deliberately adversarial, exhaustive corpus; mature validators (Xerces, libxml2) do not pass it fully. The goal is not a green number. It is to fix the deviations that are genuine correctness bugs affecting real documents, and to document the remainder as spec-justified, deliberate exclusions.

Category A: genuine correctness bugs

Fixed (thirty-one root causes, ~2255 deviations cleared)

list-datatype length facets (#146) · union pattern/enumeration facets · duration partial-order facets · QName length non-constraining · the full XSD \p{Is...} Unicode block set · element-level block against xsi:type · empty-element default/fixed values + enumeration-restriction-replaces · block="substitution" on substitution-group heads · \w/\W XSD definition · document-scoped xs:ID/xs:IDREF uniqueness and resolution · <xs:attribute ref> resolution · mixed-content type with no element model · built-in xsi:type resolution gated by substitution validity (the XSD Part 2 derivation lattice), which also closed the two gaps it exposed (a simple-typed element rejecting stray attributes; identity fields comparing in value space when the node carries an xsi:type) · compile-time constraining-facet definition validity (length-family facets are nonNegativeInteger, co-occurrence and range order) · value-bound facet validity (min/maxInclusive, min/maxExclusive, enumeration values valid in the base space; inclusive/exclusive exclusions; bound ordering) · gMonth --MM-- lexical form · schema id attribute validity (xs:ID: NCName and unique within the document). The schema-validity work brought invalid schemas accepted 2461 to 266 (schema-document structural validity: content model + complexType content shape, attribute values, name/reference + pattern-regex lexical validity, and reference resolution, against the schema-for-schemas, plus simpleType variety constraints on list itemType and union memberTypes, plus targetNamespace scope matching on local schema references, plus substitution group exclusions based on element final and schema finalDefault attributes, duplicate schema container validation across separate files with identical content, schema element order, and import constraints validation); see schema-validity-burndown.md. Plus the measurement fix (exclude W3C-disputed status="queried" entries).

Remaining, root-caused (the hard tail)

Each is a substantial, self-contained study, not a one-locus cluster fix:

Cluster(s)	~Count	Root cause (diagnosed)	Difficulty
particlesOb/Je/Jf, related	~30	<xs:any> defaults to processContents="strict"; the matched element's declaration lives in a separate schema document referenced only by the instance xsi:schemaLocation (no <import>). Needs multi-document schema loading + xsi:schemaLocation honoring, plus strict-wildcard semantics and Particle-Valid-Restriction.	large (new capability)
reI	~10	pattern values containing literal tab/newline: XML attribute-value normalization (tab/newline to space) versus the value's whiteSpace facet. The "right" pattern text depends on that interaction.	subtle
test, elemT	~65	heterogeneous grab-bags (MS "Additional"/element tests): many distinct minor causes, not one root cause. Each case needs individual triage.	per-case grind
idF, idc remainder	~14	identity-constraint selector/field XPath edge cases beyond the implemented core. The value-space comparison via instance xsi:type and built-in xsi:type resolution now land; what remains is the declared-type-driven value-space comparison (needs PSVI type assignment, since the field's declared simple type is not threaded into identity validation) and selector/field XPath edges.	moderate
wildG, stZ, addB	~25	wildcard-in-group composition, simple-type edge cases, attribute-default edges.	mixed

The clean, single-root-cause, high-leverage fixes are exhausted. Reaching zero on the instance buckets requires the multi-document-schema capability (the largest single lever, ~30 cases) and per-case work on the grab-bags; neither is a quick fix, and rushing them would violate the project's no-shortcuts ethic.

Category B: schema-for-schemas validity (unimplemented by design)

The bulk of the 2467 "invalid schema accepted". PureXML compiles schemas permissively: it reads the components it understands and ignores structurally illegal content rather than validating the schema document against the schema-for-schemas. Examples found:

• ctB: <complexType>Annotation information</complexType> (bare text content) is accepted.
• notatF: <notation> placed inside <restriction> (illegal position) is accepted.
• idA/idB/idC: malformed identity-constraint definitions accepted.
• annotation/annotB: illegal annotation placement accepted.
• addB, stF, ctG, ctH: assorted illegal component structures accepted.

Cluster(s)	Count
ctB/ctG/ctH (complexType structure)	~183
idA/idB/idC (identity constraints)	~118
notatF (notation placement)	~66
annotation/annotB	~62
addB, stF, and the long tail	remainder of 2467

Status (revised): now being implemented as the general schema-for-schemas mechanism, not a per-rule pile. The content-model pass has landed (id validity, facet-definition validity, and the allowedChildren structural table), driving invalid-schemas-accepted from 2461 to 1313. The remaining structural work (the component attribute model, child order, particle semantics) continues under schema-validity-burndown.md. A too-lenient compiler does not corrupt valid-document validation, but rubber-stamping invalid schemas is the largest conformance gap, so it is being closed rather than excluded.

Category C: arguable / needs investigation

• test, elemT (invalid instance accepted, ~86): not yet sampled; classify before fixing.

Category D: deliberate interpretations of spec-ambiguous points

These are resolved, not open: the spec underspecifies the point and the suite's own contributors disagree, so a single behavior cannot satisfy all of them. We pick the defensible reading and accept the residual deviation.

• QName length facets are non-constraining. XSD 1.0 Datatypes 4.3.1 defines the unit of length for string (characters), anyURI (characters), binary (octets), and list (items), but not for QName, so it is implementation-defined. NIST (36+ cases) and Xerces treat length/minLength/maxLength on QName as always satisfied; Microsoft (4 cases: QName_length001/003, QName_minLength003, QName_maxLength001) treats them as character counts and expects rejection. These are directly contradictory (NIST marks a 15-character value valid under length=1; MS marks foofo invalid under length=4). We chose non-constraining, matching Xerces and the larger NIST set, because a QName's value is an abstract (namespace, local-name) pair with no defined character length. Cost: the 4 MS cases remain in "invalid instances accepted". Fixing the 36+ NIST false rejections (valid documents wrongly rejected) is the more important direction.

• RecurseAsIfGroup for a repeating element against a repeating choice (particlesZ001). A derived element{0,unbounded} restricting a base choice{0,unbounded}(element, any). The Microsoft test marks it valid, and its own documentation states the reason: "Particle Derivation OK (Elt:Choice -- RecurseAsIfGroup) rule is ambiguous." Under the literal §3.9.6 rule (which Xerces follows) the element is wrapped as a one-member {1,1} synthetic group whose member keeps the element's {0,unbounded} occurrence, and that member must be a valid restriction of a {1,1} choice branch; {0,unbounded} does not fit {1,1}, so the strict reading rejects it. We follow the strict reading (matching the reference implementation), accepting this one residual "valid schema rejected". Adopting the lenient reading would require a special case that cannot be expressed without over-accepting genuinely invalid restrictions on PureXML's content-model representation (an attempt to do so regressed roughly thirty other cases). Tracked on #165. The sibling particlesV003 (Sequence:Choice MapAndSum) was a genuine bug, since fixed.

How a fix lands

Pick a Category A cluster, read 2-3 cases (schema + instance + expected) against the spec text, fix the owning code, add a focused regression test, re-run swift test -c release --filter XSTS, confirm the relevant count drops, and ratchet the baseline in Tests/XSTSSuiteTests.swift down to the new value. Tracking issues: #145 (invalid schema accepted), #146 (valid instance rejected), #147 (invalid instance accepted), #148 (valid schema rejected).