Re: [Sax-devel] Re: [xml-dev] SAX/Java Proposed Changes
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From: Neil G. <ne...@ca...> - 2004-03-07 21:29:53
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Hi all, Much thanks to Elliotte for having cc'd the sax-devel list on this discussion. Somehow, I'd been under the impression that discussions relating to changing SAX would take care to ensure that members of this list were apprised of their course; but I now fear that those of us not subscribed to xml-dev have missed a great deal recently. Elliotte wrote: >>I am sorry, but I disagree. I have a lot of code depending on the >>assumption that the invocation of endDocument() indicates that no >>errors have been reported. > Then your code will break when used with some of today's parsers > which do call endDocument() after a fatal error.. :-( I seem to recall you having noted that Xerces, Crimson, and Oracle all concurred that endDocument() was optional under severe error conditions. If so, what parsers exhibit the opposite behaviour? I think the main thing though is that even in this very limited survey we've uncovered someone for whom this would be a backward-incompatible change. As regrettable as this inconsistency might be, and whatever the right answer is, we should surely not be introduce backward-incompatible behaviours in what wasn't even intended to be a minor patch release. To my mind, such things should be reserved for some future SAX 2.1. Cheers, Neil Neil Graham XML Parser Development IBM Toronto Lab Phone: 905-413-3519, T/L 969-3519 E-mail: ne...@ca... Elliotte Rusty Harold <el...@me...> To: Jochen Wiedmann <jo...@is...> Sent by: cc: xm...@li..., sax...@li... sax...@li...ur Subject: [Sax-devel] Re: [xml-dev] SAX/Java Proposed Changes ceforge.net 03/07/2004 03:11 PM At 6:32 PM +0100 3/7/04, Jochen Wiedmann wrote: >I am sorry, but I disagree. I have a lot of code depending on the >assumption that the invocation of endDocument() indicates that no >errors have been reported. Then your code will break when used with some of today's parsers which do call endDocument() after a fatal error.. :-( >In particular, I see no reason for forcing endDocument(). The >parser application has all information that it requires, because >the simple fact that the parser returns from XMLReader.parse() >(either via return or by throwing an exception) indicates the >same information. > It's a question of where you have that information. It's often convenient to know the document has ended inside the ContentHandler. Not that you can't have the method that calls parse() then call endDocument() inside the ContentHandler, but it's ugly, hard to explain, and error prone. >I wouldn't have a problem, if SAX had always specified this, but >it didn't. > > One of the maintainers claims it did always specify this. One of the maintainers claims it didn't. Honestly, this is a mess; and sooner or later I think we should be pick one path or the other, but maybe not quite yet. -- Elliotte Rusty Harold el...@me... Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003) http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click _______________________________________________ List: sax-devel, sax...@li... See: http://www.saxproject.org/ https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sax-devel |