RE: SAX-core #2: factories

[Michael Brennan <Michael_Brennan@allegis.com>]

I like this proposal, too. As of JDK 1.3, Sun seems to have adopted the
convention of putting a file in /META-INF/services named after the service
interface containing a list of implementation class names. This is what JAXP
does. I think adopting this approach would be great. (And although the
convention seems to have started with JDK 1.3, it does not seem to have any
inherent dependency on 1.3. JAXP just loads the appropriate files via
ClassLoader.getResourceAsStream.)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Brownell [mailto:david-b@pacbell.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 10:05 AM
> To: sax-devel@lists.sourceforge.net; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: SAX-core #2: factories
> 
> 
> This seems to me most like a bugfix, but I'm sending it for
> possible discussion in case anyone has issues.
> 
> Factories
> 
> - Most distributions don't bother defining a default parser to
>   use when the appropriate system property isn't set, or access
>   to it is disallowed (applets etc), though that's allowed by
>   the spec.  Net result, the SAX bootstrap API is excessively
>   fragile with respect to environment and configuration.
>   
>   This encourages initting by calling constructors directly
>   (and using nonstandard parse APIs), or using other bootstrap
>   APIs (like JAXP) which provide robust defaults.  Neither of
>   those is healthy for SAX.
> 
> PROPOSAL:
> 
>     - Update javadoc to say clearly that when the system property
>       can't be accessed, an environment-specific default may be used.
>     
>     - Encourage distributions to provide such a default; it doesn't
>       change the API, only increases robustness.