How do I comment out a block of tags in XML?
You can use that style of comment across multiple lines (which exists also in HTML)
<detail> <band height="20"> <!-- Hello, I am a multi-line XML comment <staticText> <reportElement x="180" y="0" width="200" height="20"/> <text><![CDATA[Hello World!]]></text> </staticText> --> </band></detail>
You can wrap the text with a non-existing processing-instruction, e.g.:
<detail><?ignore <band height="20"> <staticText> <reportElement x="180" y="0" width="200" height="20"/> <text><![CDATA[Hello World!]]></text> </staticText> </band>?></detail>
Nested processing instructions are not allowed and '?>' ends the processing instruction (see http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-pi)
If you ask, because you got errors with the <!-- -->
syntax, it's most likely the CDATA section (and there the ]]>
part), that then lies in the middle of the comment. It should not make a difference, but ideal and real world can be quite a bit apart, sometimes (especially when it comes to XML processing).
Try to change the ]]>
, too:
<!--detail> <band height="20"> <staticText> <reportElement x="180" y="0" width="200" height="20"/> <text><![CDATA[Hello World!]--><!--]></text> </staticText> </band> </detail-->
Another thing, that comes to mind: If the content of your XML somewhere contains two hyphens, the comment immediately ends there:
<!-- <a> This is strange -- but true!</a> -->--------------------------^ comment ends here
That's quite a common pitfall. It's inherited from the way SGML handles comments. (Read the XML spec on this topic)