Re: SAX2: When to resolve System Ids

"Karl Waclawek" <[email protected]> wrote on 03/31/2004 12:30:03 AM:

> 
> > When I raised this a couple weeks ago, it got lost (possibly because 
these 
> > threads are getting fragmented between sax-devel and xml-dev) in the 
> > discussion on the canonical location for feature documentation. Either 
it 
> > was always intended that the systemId passed to 
> > DeclHandler.externalEntityDecl() be fully resolved or including this 
> > method among those affected by resolve-dtd-uris is an error.
> 
> For now I have decided to implement it like the feature 
> documentation suggests,
> as I fail to see why externalEntityDecl() should be treated differently.
> Maybe I am overlooking something obvious.

Two words... backwards compatibility.

I believe the text in DeclHandler.externalEntityDecl() predates this 
feature. It says that systemId is the 'declared' system identifier. Xerces 
for instance reports the declared system identifier as it was specified in 
the document to DeclHandler.externalEntityDecl(). It reports an absolute 
URI for DTDHandler.notationDecl() and DTDHandler.unparsedEntityDecl(). 
It's what the javadoc says. I agree this doesn't make much sense, but 
changing the behaviour for DeclHandler.externalEntityDecl() now has the 
potential to affect users of SAX who rely on this parameter being the 
specified system identifier and not the one absolutized against a base 
URI.

Michael Glavassevich
XML Parser Development
IBM Toronto Lab
E-mail: [email protected]
E-mail: [email protected]