Re: Re: [xml-dev] SAX/Java Proposed Changes

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:  [email protected]




                                                                                                                                          
                      Elliotte Rusty Harold                                                                                               
                      <[email protected]>          To:       Jochen Wiedmann <[email protected]>                                        
                      Sent by:                          cc:       [email protected], [email protected]                  
                      [email protected]        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
   [email protected]
   Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
   http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA


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