xml-dev - ANN: Version 2.28 or Perl module XML::Parser released

[Clark Cooper <coopercc@netheaven.com>]

I've uploaded Version 2.28 of XML::Parser to CPAN.

This is likely to be the last release of the 2.xx branch of XML::Parser.
I'm planning major structural changes that will become version 3.x.
I'll talk about these plans in a later message to the perl-xml
mailing list.

The big change for this release are extensive patches to expat to allow
me to remove the buggy parsing of declarations from Expat.xs. A couple of
feature changes resulted from this:

o Element declaration handlers now receive objects of type
  XML::Parser::ContentModel for the model parameter (instead of strings).
  Objects of this class represent the parsed structure of the model,
  although they will still look like a string representation of the model
  when referred to as a string. There a methods in this class to determine
  the type of the model, the associated quantifier (if any), and to
  return (for structured types) a list of components, also as objects of
  type XML::Parser::ContentModel.

o The doctype declaration handler is called prior to parsing the internal
  or external subset of DTD declarations and no longer returns the internal
  subset as a string, but passes a true or false value indicating whether or
  not there is an internal subset.

o There's a new DoctypeFin handler that's called at the end of processing the
  DOCTYPE declaration.

o One negative feature: inside declaration handlers only, the
  recognized_string, original_string, and default_current methods no longer
  return correct strings. Expat uses a different mechanism for
  tokenizing and parsing DTDs (compared to the rest of a document), that
  leads to loss of information about the "start" of an event.

Other features (unrelated to surgery on expat):

Other features (unrelated to surgery on expat):

o Added a handler that gets called after parsing external entities. In
  addition to allowing clean up, it allows balanced setting of the basename.
  This occurs even if an exception occurs while parsing the external
  entity.

o the parsefile method and the default handlers file_ext_ent_handler and
  lwp_ext_ent_handler now all set the basename.

o Fixed a major bug where exceptions bypassed memory cleanup actions

o Merged patches from Larry Wall that tag generated strings as UTF-8
  for perl 5.6.0 and beyond, where appropriate.

Here's the relevant portion of the Changes file:
================================================================
2.28 Mon Mar 27 21:21:50 EST 2000
        - Junked local (Expat.xs) declaration parsing and patched expat to
          handle XML declarations, element declarations, attlist declarations,
          and all entity declarations. By eliminating both shadow buffers and
          local declaration parsing in Expat.xs, I've eliminated the two most
          common sources of serious bugs in the expat interface.
          o thus fixed the segfault and parse position bugs reported by
            Ivan Kurmanov <iku@fnmail.com>
          o and the doctype bug reported by Kevin Lund
            <Kevin.Lund@westgroup.com>
          o The element declaration handler no longer receives a string,
            but an XML::Parser::ContentModel object that represents the
            parsed model, but still looks like a string if referred to as
            a string. This class is documented in the XML::Parser::Expat
            pod under "XML::Parser::ContentModel Methods".
          o The doctype declaration handler no longer receives the internal
            subset as a string, but in its place a true or undef value
            indicating whether or not there is an internal subset. Also,
            it's called prior to processing either the internal or external
            DTD subset (as suggested by Enno Derksen <enno@att.com>.)
          o There is a new DoctypeFin handler that's called after finishing
            parsing all of the DOCTYPE declaration, including any internal
            or external DTD declarations.
          o One bit of lossage is that recognized_string, original_string,
            and default_current no longer work inside declaration handlers.
        - Added a handler that gets called after parsing external entities:
          ExternEntFin. Suggested by Jeff Horner <jhorner@netcentral.net>.
        - parsefile, file_ext_ent_handler, & lwp_ext_ent_handler now all
          set the base path. This problem has been raised more than once
          and I'm not sure to whom credit should be given.
        - The file_ext_ent_handler now opens a file handle instead of
          reading the entire entity at once.
        - Merged patches supplied by Larry Wall to (for perl 5.6 and beyond)
          tag generated strings as UTF-8, where appropriate.
        - Fixed a bug in xml_escape reported by Jerry Geiger <jgeiger@rios.de>.
          It failed when requesting escaping of perl regex meta-characters.
        - Laurent Caprani <caprani@pop.multimania.com> reported a bug in the
          Proc handler for the Debug style.
        - <chocolateboy@usa.net> sent in a patch for the element index
          mechanism. I was popping the stack too soon in the endElement fcn.
        - Jim Miner <jfm@winternet.com> sent in a patch to fix a warning in
          Expat.pm.
        - Kurt Starsinic pointed out that the eval used to check for string
          versus IO handle was leaving $@ dirty, thereby foiling higher
          level exception handlers
        - An expat question by Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net> helped me
          see that exeptions in the parse call bypass the Expat release method,
          causing memory leaks.
        - Mark D. Anderson <mda@discerning.com> noted that calling
          recognized_string from the Final method caused a dump. There are
          a bunch of methods that should not be called after parsing has
          finished. These now have protective if statements around them.
        - Updated canonical utility to conform to newer version of Canonical
          XML working draft.

-- 
Clark Cooper		Software Engineer	Home:   coopercc@netheaven.com
			Schenectady, NY	USA	Work:   cccooper@ltionline.com

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