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Tyler Close wrote:
> Could the two sides compromise on a modified SAX API
> that was defined in terms of a polymorphic string type?
I think this would be a terrible mistake if it requires
changes to the SAX interface. SAX is already well deployed in the
field today and changes to the interface must be strongly resisted. It
might have made sense to do this before SAX 2 was "accepted," but the
opportunity to argue for such things in SAX itself has passed.
Your proposal, if accepted, would require that the many users
of SAX would have to deal with and be confused by the polymorphic
string type even if they don't need the benefits it provides. As has
been pointed out many times in this thread, the whole XML world is
already too confusing. We can't afford to make it more confusing by
introducing such complexities.
I think that if you wanted to support polymorphic strings in a
SAX-like interface, the correct way to do it is to exploit the SAX
extension mechanisms and define that polymorphic string support as an
extension to SAX along the lines of what I proposed for the typed
"values" interface. This would allow people who liked polymorphic
strings to use them while not changing the SAX interface in such a way
that makes it more complex.
bob wyman
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