As long as the elements are at the right level, order "shouldn't" matter. But I guess this prevents the document from breaking code that assumes some specific ChildNodes(n) ordering of the tags.

I think it's really lame that the DTD doesn't control the constuction of the tree.

>Off the subject here, but isn't it wierd to have an XML document in which the order of the elements is important? Aren't the elements being retrieved by name anyway? I thought that to be valid, a document only had to conform to the correct hierarchy of nodes, not the right order.