It also works fine (I think to remember) without DTD listed in any page.xml, because then dom4j doesn't say it is false when in fact it isn't there. One could say that's a bad library, that returns different results for an attribute value whether the DTD is mentioned in the XML or not. Though it is open for discussion what one expects. I think at least it should be optional to get the result one wants if one cares to code it so, and it seems dom4j doesn't let us do that here. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4028022#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...