xml-dev - Re: ANN: SAX2-beta (2000-01-28)

[David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>]

Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
> 
> At 01:13 PM 1/28/00 -0500, David Megginson wrote:
> >SAX is the Simple API for XML, a very-widely implemented event-based
> >interface for processing XML documents.
> >
> >The beta release of SAX2/Java is now available for download at
> >
> >  http://www.megginson.com/SAX/SAX2/
> >
> I would like to thank David publicly for his commitment to bringing this
> forward.

Ditto!

 
> It would be useful (and I am sure encouraging) if the authors of current
> tools would find the time and effort to produce beta SAX2-aware versions.

Working on it ... updating six SAX2 (alpha) parsers and the associated tools
(like DOM construction etc) takes time.  Also testing it all, even planning
a partial punt on application level testing.


> This is one of the sure ways of highlighting what works and what doesn't.
> It will be an important step towards getting namespaces more widely used.

Also, moving from DOM L1 to DOM L2 (which has namespace support).


One SAX beta problem:  compatibility.  With alpha it was natural for a
parser to easily implement both SAX1 and SAX2 ... not so with Beta.
(Note that it's not the path that DOM took.)  That makes it a lot more
likely that application level code will be disrupted.

There are also several places where a "raw-names" feature is used, more
or less as the converse of the documented "namespace-prefixes" feature.
Both control whether an "XML 1.0" view of the information is available
(with "xmlns*" attributes visible, and names in their original forms).
Of the two, "raw-names" makes a bit more sense to me, but I'd prefer to
see a name that connotes its function better, like "xml-names".

- Dave

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