xml-dev - Re: SAX: External Entity Start and End (question 2 of 10)

[Paul Prescod <papresco@technologist.com>]

David Megginson wrote:
> 
> The only way that I can resolve this correctly is if I know the URI of
> the current external entity.  In Lark, you provide this information
> with a separate Entity argument to each callback; this is a legitimate
> (and more powerful) option, but from the perspective of SAX, it ends
> up complicating the entire API instead of just adding two
> easily-ignored callbacks.

It is possible to have "invisible arguments" to a callback that do not
complicate the interface. This sounds very mysterious, but an "invisible
argument" is just a variable whose value can be fetched through a parser
method. getCurrentEntity() or getFileEncoding() would be examples.

I think that this is the right way to handle this entity problem.
Require the parser to track the information rather than the application.

 Paul Prescod
--
http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

Art is always at peril in universities, where there are so many people, 
young and old, who love art less than argument, and dote upon a text 
that provides the nutritious pemmican on which scholars love to chew. 
				-- Robertson Davies in "The Cunning Man"



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