SAX2 ... missing features?

[David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>]

SAX2 has been out for a while, and I'm curious what folks'
pet peeves are.  Please share!  I'd hope that some of these
could turn into (backwards compatible) updates.

Here's a random list that might seed some discussions.

- features/properties

    * Parser name and version can be useful when
       troubleshooting ... a string property?

- more infoset items

    * xml version unavailable.  Fix might be providing
       a string property, logically augmenting the locator's
       information about any given entity.  If blueberry,
       then different core rules may apply...

    * text encoding unavailable.  Similar to version; apps
       need this to know if "Unicode Normalization Form
       C" must be applied in some cases (C14N, current
       DOM L3 draft for saving).

    * standalone flag unavailable.  Could also be a
       string property, but unrelated to locator info.
       (Probably affects XML generation most.)

    * Attribute "specified" flag is omitted.  (Likewise,
       mostly affects XML generation -- or DOM.)

- conformance

    * NamespaceSupport.declarePrefix() should likely
      report some kind of error for a relative URI (no "://")

I'm also tempted to put "no utility library" on that list.
Stuff like an XML writer gets used by most folk that
focus on SAX, and something to efficiently test whether
characters are legal parts of XML (1.0 :) names.  And
there's lots of other stuff which, were it more generally
available, would make it easier for folk to leverage SAX.

Comments?

- Dave