xml-dev - Re: SAX2: Interning names in namespaces

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

Terje Norderhaug wrote:

> For each namespace, the parser may use a weak hashtable indexed on
> equality.

I think that requiring weak references is unreasonable for a cross-platform
API.

> The implementation results in that each namespace has its own copy of the
> name.

I agree that this would be a useful property, and I suggest that it
be exposed as a standard SAX2 feature, perhaps named "names-interned-namespaces".

> Parts of the namespace handling in SAX can be simplified if it can assume
> that the parsers interns each name in its own namespace. It can eliminate
> the need for passing namespace information as a separate argument to
> methods or encoded in the name string.

Unless there is a mechanism for recovering the namespace name from the
name, this will not work well, as application behavior will depend on
particular namespace names.

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