re: SAX2: Missing isSpecified show-stops DOM building

[David Megginson <david@megginson.com>]

Ingo Macherius writes:

 > I would be very grateful if some of the SAX-debate veterans could
 > comment on this, or even point out a way how I can help getting
 > this into SAX 2.0.1.

My much-delayed next SAX2 release will be a bug-fix-only release, with
JUnit tests (finally!), and it will be my last one.  When I finally
dig myself out of the various holes I'm in and get that release out,
we'll have to decide where and by whom SAX2 will be maintained -- the
new maintainer(s) may be very open to change, or may be very
conservative about it.

In the meantime, the best place to start is by developing and
promoting a new feature and interface.  Try something like this:

  Feature: http://www.foo.org/sax/features/attribute-specified-info
  Read-only

  If true, the Attributes object passed in startElement events will
  also implement the AttributeSpecifiedInfo interface, and can be cast
  to it.

and then something like

  public interface AttributeSpecifiedInfo
  {
    public boolean isSpecified (int index);
    public boolean isSpecified (String uri, String localName);
    public boolean isSpecified (String qName);
  }

Publish this in a normal spec-y format (i.e. lots of references,
definitions, etc.) and then either convince a couple of XML parser
writers to support it, or write patches yourself against the OSS
parsers like Xalan.  If it catches on, then you'll have a strong case
for arguing for inclusion in future versions of SAX.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david@megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/