xml-dev - Re: SAX/C++: First interface draft

[Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no>]

>>>>> David Megginson <david@megginson.com>:

> Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:
>> And Objectspace Standards<ToolKit> is not compatible with the Standard 
>> C++ Library iostreams of MSVC++.

> I think that this goes beyond the scope of SAX -- we have to be able
> to assume at least a basic level of ANSI-C++ conformance, or else
> we'll end up rewriting the whole standard library.  I'm willing not
> to beat up on the hairier features (like templates), but we have to
> be able to count on the basics.

Then you have to define what this basic level of ANSI-C++ conformance
consists of: templates (at what level), namespaces, standard library
components inside the std::namespace, the existence of the parts of
the standard C++ library, and which parts.

We decided to go for a basic conformance of standard C++, when we
started the project I'm working on, in the summer of 1995.  We have to
use Standards<ToolKit> precisely because the standard C++ things we
use (such as STL and basic_string<>) that are delivered with MSVC++ is
broken.

Our "basic conformance" consists of using STL (extensively) and
string.  We've stayed away from namespaces, and exotic iostream
features (code_cvt<>, templated streams with wide streams).  We've
used templates in our own code, without much incident (the compilers
are Sunpro C++, gcc/egcs and MSVC++), but we've moved away from that
because they caused code bloat.

A minor annoyance with the C++ mapping of CORBA IDL, is that it used
an exotic and low priority (among implementers) feature like
namespaces, and disregarded useful standard C++ things like vector<>
(for sequence<>) and std::basic_string<>.

I would hope to avoid the same reasoning for SAX.


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