AFAICT, there's something wrong with your installation - that file gets through checkXML correctly here. Perhaps you need to update kdelibs. 

So I compiled kdelibs but now I get this output:

[ 56%] Generating index.cache.bz2
cd /usr/src/kdelibs4-svn/src/kdelibs-build/doc/sonnet && ../../bin/meinproc4.shell --check --srcdir=/usr/src/kdelibs4-svn/src/kdelibs/kdoctools/ --cache /usr/src/kdelibs4-svn/src/kdelibs-build/doc/sonnet/index.cache.bz2 /usr/src/kdelibs4-svn/src/kdelibs/doc/sonnet/index.docbook
../../bin/meinproc4.shell: line 4: 21818 Segmentation fault      LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/src/kdelibs4-svn/src/kdelibs-build/lib/./:/opt/kde4/lib:/usr/src/kdelibs4-svn/src/kdelibs-build/lib/.:/opt/qt4/lib${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH} "/usr/src/kdelibs4-svn/src/kdelibs-build/bin/meinproc4" "$@"
make[2]: *** [doc/sonnet/index.cache.bz2] Error 139
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kdelibs4-svn/src/kdelibs-build'
make[1]: *** [doc/sonnet/CMakeFiles/handbook.dir/all] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kdelibs4-svn/src/kdelibs-build'
make: *** [all] Error 2

last time (three days ago) I compiled it works well. Any other suggestion?

I have kdelibs at revision 717545, but I get always the same error ..

# pacman -Qi kdelibs4-svn 
Nome           : kdelibs4-svn
Versione       : 717545-1
URL            : http://www.kde.org

is there a method to check that checkXML work correctly?

I have the same problem with Gentoo.
Is there a difference between KDE 3.5 checkXML and KDE 4.0 checkXML ?
In my case, as KDE checkXML isn't in PATH, maybe KDE 3.5 checkXML is used.

The original report is correct, and I got the same problem.
The same thing happens in at least one component of kdegames and several components of kdeedu (marble, parley, klettres, kalgebra).

I just noticed that the date on the original post was pre-4.0.0.

Just to clarify, this bug *still* exists in the official 4.0.0 release.

Why in the world was a bug which prevents building a major package not fixed before KDE 4.0.0 was released?

I get the same problem with the 4.0.0 release :
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208052

I think there is something wrong with my installation but I don't know what...
meinproc4 reports the error :

/usr/kde/4.0/bin/meinproc4 --check /var/tmp/portage/kde-base/kdebase-4.0.0/work/kdebase-4.0.0/workspace/doc/ksysguard/index.docbook
index.docbook:20: parser error : Entity 'John.Tapsell' not defined
&John.Tapsell; &John.Tapsell.mail;
              ^
index.docbook:20: parser error : Entity 'John.Tapsell.mail' not defined
&John.Tapsell; &John.Tapsell.mail;
                                  ^
index.docbook:22: element othercredit: validity error : Element othercredit content does not follow the DTD, expecting ((personname | (honorific | firstname | surname | lineage | othername | affiliation | authorblurb | contrib)+) , (personblurb | email | address)*), got (CDATA CDATA )
</othercredit>
              ^
index.docbook:460: parser error : Entity 'John.Tapsell' not defined
<para>&ksysguard; is currently developed and maintained by &John.Tapsell;
                                                                         ^
index.docbook:461: parser error : Entity 'John.Tapsell.mail' not defined
&John.Tapsell.mail;. &ksysguard; is a rewrite of
                   ^

Even xmllint (libxml2-2.6.30) doesn't validate the index.docbook :

# xmllint --dtdvalid /usr/kde/4.0/share/apps/ksgmltools2/customization/dtd/kdex.dtd /var/tmp/portage/kde-base/kdebase-4.0.0/work/kdebase-4.0.0/workspace/doc/ksysguard/index.docbook
/var/tmp/portage/kde-base/kdebase-4.0.0/work/kdebase-4.0.0/workspace/doc/ksysguard/index.docbook:10: element book: validity error : Syntax of value for attribute lang of book is not valid
/var/tmp/portage/kde-base/kdebase-4.0.0/work/kdebase-4.0.0/workspace/doc/ksysguard/index.docbook:10: element book: validity error : Value "" for attribute lang of book is not among the enumerated set
/var/tmp/portage/kde-base/kdebase-4.0.0/work/kdebase-4.0.0/workspace/doc/ksysguard/index.docbook:15: element author: validity error : Element author content does not follow the DTD, expecting ((personname | (honorific | firstname | surname | lineage | othername | affiliation | authorblurb | contrib)+) , (personblurb | email | address)*), got (CDATA CDATA )
/var/tmp/portage/kde-base/kdebase-4.0.0/work/kdebase-4.0.0/workspace/doc/ksysguard/index.docbook:19: element othercredit: validity error : Element othercredit content does not follow the DTD, expecting ((personname | (honorific | firstname | surname | lineage | othername | affiliation | authorblurb | contrib)+) , (personblurb | email | address)*), got (CDATA CDATA )
/var/tmp/portage/kde-base/kdebase-4.0.0/work/kdebase-4.0.0/workspace/doc/ksysguard/index.docbook:24: element othercredit: validity error : Element othercredit content does not follow the DTD, expecting ((personname | (honorific | firstname | surname | lineage | othername | affiliation | authorblurb | contrib)+) , (personblurb | email | address)*), got (CDATA CDATA )
/var/tmp/portage/kde-base/kdebase-4.0.0/work/kdebase-4.0.0/workspace/doc/ksysguard/index.docbook:29: element othercredit: validity error : Element othercredit content does not follow the DTD, expecting ((personname | (honorific | firstname | surname | lineage | othername | affiliation | authorblurb | contrib)+) , (personblurb | email | address)*), got (CDATA CDATA )
/var/tmp/portage/kde-base/kdebase-4.0.0/work/kdebase-4.0.0/workspace/doc/ksysguard/index.docbook:42: element legalnotice: validity error : Element legalnotice content does not follow the DTD, expecting (blockinfo? , title? , (calloutlist | glosslist | itemizedlist | orderedlist | segmentedlist | simplelist | variablelist | caution | important | note | tip | warning | literallayout | programlisting | programlistingco | screen | screenco | screenshot | formalpara | para | simpara | blockquote | indexterm | beginpage)+), got (CDATA)
Document /var/tmp/portage/kde-base/kdebase-4.0.0/work/kdebase-4.0.0/workspace/doc/ksysguard/index.docbook does not validate against /usr/kde/4.0/share/apps/ksgmltools2/customization/dtd/kdex.dtd


As meinproc4 uses libxml2 (/usr/lib/libxml2.so.2) and  libxslt (/usr/lib/libxslt.so.1), maybe there is a specific version of these libraries to use.

In my case, I have :
libxml2-2.6.30
libxslt-1.1.22

I've only checked a handful, but I can't find *any* index.docbook that validates. Plasma, klipper, kmenuedit, kdm, kinfocenter

libxml2: 2.6.31-1.fc8
libxslt: 1.1.22-1.fc8

I believed there is a problem with my PC but I tested on another PC (Fedora 7) with official kdebase-workspace-4.0.0.tar.bz2 :

$ tar xjvf kdebase-workspace-4.0.0.tar.bz2
$ mkdir build_workspace
$ cd build_workspace
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ../kdebase-workspace-4.0.0
$ make

and I get exactly the same error !

[ 95%] Generating index.cache.bz2
[ 95%] Built target handbook
[ 95%] Generating index.cache.bz2
index.docbook:20: parser error : Entity 'John.Tapsell' not defined
&John.Tapsell; &John.Tapsell.mail;
              ^
index.docbook:20: parser error : Entity 'John.Tapsell.mail' not defined
&John.Tapsell; &John.Tapsell.mail;
                                  ^
index.docbook:22: element othercredit: validity error : Element othercredit content does not follow the DTD, expecting ((personname | (honorific | firstname | surname | lineage | othername | affiliation | authorblurb | contrib)+) , (personblurb | email | address)*), got (CDATA CDATA )
</othercredit>
              ^
index.docbook:460: parser error : Entity 'John.Tapsell' not defined
<para>&ksysguard; is currently developed and maintained by &John.Tapsell;
                                                                         ^
index.docbook:461: parser error : Entity 'John.Tapsell.mail' not defined
&John.Tapsell.mail;. &ksysguard; is a rewrite of
                   ^
make[2]: *** [doc/ksysguard/index.cache.bz2] Erreur 1
make[1]: *** [doc/ksysguard/CMakeFiles/handbook.dir/all] Erreur 2
make: *** [all] Erreur 2

So, is the official package kdebase-workspace broken ?

I have understood the bug : meinproc4 is like a preprocessor which replaces Docbook identities by identities defined in customization/entities/contributor.entities

Unfortunately, this file already existed in KDE 3.5. If we make a difference between the 3.5 and 4.0 version, the "John.Tapsell" is missing in 3.5.

So, meinproc4 seems to use the 3.5 contributor.entities.

Does someone know how to change the meinproc4 search path ???

Most certainly it is broken.
A temporary work around if you just want to compile and use KDE 4 is just 
deleting the offending entities. For example, replace "&John.Tapsell;" 
with "John Tapsell" in most cases. In some cases you might have to remove a 
whole XML block, such as with the contributor block (not sure what the tag 
name is off-hand).

Is there someone to change the assignation as the problem is in mpeinproc4 which is in kdelibs ?

I have done a code review on kdelibs because I have the same issue.

I assume that this is a catalog processing issue in meinproc4 because the 'dtd' type of kstandarddirs::locate will no been process in kdecode/kernel/kstandarddirs_unix.cpp

Unfortunately, I was not able to test out my patch, so I will wait until I was able to done it. before I want to publish my patch.

Created attachment 23734 [details]
Patch to solve the entity resolving issue in meinproc4

the is a dirty patch to solve the catalog issue in meinproc4. This issue occurs
if you have to catalogs /usr/share/kde4/apps/ksgmltools and
/usr/hsre/apps/ksgmltools on your system.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to set the catalog for the xslt processor, so
you will get a simular message from the xslt processor, but in opposite of the
xml processor this will not terminate the build process.

yep, this patch fixes building

The "dtd" resource type is added by meinproc4 itself (xslt.cpp line 187 here).

$ kde4-config --path data --locate ksgmltools2/docbook/xml-dtd-4.2/docbook.cat
/d/kde/inst/kde4/share/apps/ksgmltools2/docbook/xml-dtd-4.2/docbook.cat

Works here, but that's because /usr/share/apps isn't in my "data" resource. But if it's there, it should be last, so that kde4 stuff has priority, no? Not sure what's the best setup for $XDG_DATA_DIRS and kde3+kde4 together yet.

This is occurring in KUbuntu 8.04 

Unpacking skanlite-kde4 (from .../skanlite-kde4_0.1-0ubuntu1~hardy1_amd64.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/skanlite-kde4_0.1-0ubuntu1~hardy1_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/kde4/share/doc/kde4/HTML/en/doc/index.cache.bz2', which is also in package kdesudo-kde4
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/skanlite-kde4_0.1-0ubuntu1~hardy1_amd64.deb

Ben, your error has nothing to do with this bugreport. What you see is a packaging bug and you should file a report with kubuntu about that.

Did anyone with the problem try the kde4-config command I suggested?
Do you still experience this problem?

Marking as NEEDSINFO

I think KDE4 is no longer maintained and I have never seen this problem in recent KDE5.

Dear Bug Submitter,

This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least 15 days. Please provide the requested information as soon as possible and set the bug status as REPORTED. Due to regular bug tracker maintenance, if the bug is still in NEEDSINFO status with no change in 30 days, the bug will be closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME due to lack of needed information.

For more information about our bug triaging procedures please read the wiki located here: https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Bug_triaging

If you have already provided the requested information, please set the bug status as REPORTED so that the KDE team knows that the bug is ready to be confirmed.

Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!

Dear Bug Submitter,

This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least 30 days. The bug is now closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME due to lack of needed information.

For more information about our bug triaging procedures please read the wiki located here: https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Bug_triaging

Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!