Re: SAX 2.0 enhancement proposal

[Rob Lugt <roblugt@elcel.com>]

David Brownell wrote
>
> <snip/>
>
> Seems to me THAT is the problem, not SAX.
>
> The XML spec is quite explicit on this topic:  "relative URIs are relative
to the
> location of the resource within which the entity declaration occurs"
(4.2.2).
>
> Those are the only contexts in which an XML parser needs to resolve URIs,
> and there's no weasel-wording that would allow what that catalog spec is
> intending to do.  So I don't see why SAX should permit anything else,
> unless the XML spec gets a substantive functional change there ...
>

Norman Walsh and Paul Grosso have posted replies that clearly indicate that
what the XML Catalog spec is suggesting is a perfectly valid thing to do.  I
agree with them.

Moreover, I disagree with your position about SAX "permitting" something, as
if it had a moral duty to withhold certain information.  SAX is an API and
nothing more.  An erudite committee has decided that certain information is
required for entity resolution, and entity resolution is something that SAX
was designed to support.  I think it is preposterous to withhold that
information for reasons other than interface compatibility.

Certainly SAX was not intended to report all the document properties that
may be of interest to every application (hence the 'simple' in its title),
it had to draw the line somewhere.  But the line was drawn to include entity
resolution.  Now that we are seriously trying to use SAX to accomplish
entity resolution a flaw has been found.  There should be no surprise here,
no software is proved until it is used for its intended purpose.  We now
have the opportunity to improve SAX in the light of experience.

Regards
Rob Lugt
ElCel Technology