XML Java API Standardization

[Peter Murray-Rust]

In message <199706191800.NAA14675 at copsol.com> lex at www.copsol.com (Alex Milowski) writes:
> Ok, I'm going to write about the "vision" thing... so you have been warned! ;-)

[... lots of other contributions and the
    vision thing read, hopefully understood, and snipped...]

> 
> What we design and engineer today and label a standard may stick around longer
> than we expect.  We shouldn't take too minimalist of an approach.  My
> compromise is for a *reasonable* solution that has growth of the API
> designed into it.

We have had a previous discussion on this list (ca. 2+ months ago) and we got
quite close to getting an API and then everyone went off to other things.  It's
even more urgent now, because if we don't close on something, then in 2 more 
months there will be 16 incompatible parsers ... [a tcl one was anounced today,
and we can assume there are others which don't come near XML-DEV...]

It seems as if out of the spectrum of possibilities at one end is a 
'golden grove' solution where every possible property set, etc. is included.
And at the other the reasonable minimum is close to what John has put up.  There
is also something 'in the middle' which may be more difficult to hit precisely.

I do not want to have a say in this (I don't even know what a grove *is* - 
even after having had it explained more than once), but I'll try to work
with whatever comes out.  However, I think we ought to aim for something within
the next few days or we run the risk of losing momentum again.  

I am particularly impressed by the spirit of collaboration in this discussion
and the willingness of current authors to recraft their code (OK they have
to do it again on July 1 anyway :-).  If we can agree where in the spectrum
we wish to end up (there could be more than one place, as suggested), then
it may take a few days to flesh out the details.  Would it be reasonable to aim
for having something roughly concurrent with July 1??

	P.



-- 
Peter Murray-Rust, domestic net connection
Virtual School of Molecular Sciences
http://www.vsms.nottingham.ac.uk/

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