xml-dev - RE: SAX (Introduction, Recomandations, Future...)

["Don Park" <donpark@docuverse.com>]

>For example, the XML-DEV members could elect a "moderator" 
>taking over David's role (probably David himself...). Democracy 
>does not exclude delegation of final decisions to an appropiate person.

XML-DEV does not have a facility for elections.  Besides, if I was
David, I would have wanted to the right to designate the next care-
taker for SAX.  While many of us have contributed to SAX, David has
taken the burden of making final decisions and the task of writing
and packaging it.  All we need are volunteers who are willing to
commit a great deal of time and energy into SAX.  Let David pick.

Frankly, I am not too happy with SAX2 because it seems bloated.
Each small steps we have taken seems very logical, yet the result
is less satisfying than I expected.  Perhaps the approach we have
taken is wrong.

Here is an example of a different approach that might have resulted
in smaller API.  Recently, a customer asked for comment information
because scripts are hidden inside it.  Because SAX doesn't support
comment, I changed the HTML parser driver to convert comments into
an element (std:comment).  While some of us might cringe at this
solution, I think it is simpler than bloating the API.  Similar
approach could have been taken with the DOM API.  Rather than creating
a whole new set of interfaces for schema, schema information could
have been exposed as just another DOM Document.

Anyway, I sympathize with the heavy burden David is under and feel
that he will make the right decision in the end, as he had with
SAX1.  David, please do not feel that you have to finish SAX2 before
handing it over to someone else.  Just do what you can do and no more.

Best,

Don Park    -   mailto:donpark@docuverse.com
Docuverse   -   http://www.docuverse.com