SAX, non-XML Documents, and Legal Characters

[David Megginson]

While we're on the topic of character streams, here's another
question: should the SAXDocumentHandler.characters() method be allowed
to deliver only XML characters?

At first, the answer "no" might seem self-evident, but what if someone
decides to build a LaTeX or RTF parser that implements the SAX
interface?  Should we require the parser to strip out non-XML
characters before delivering the SAX events, or should we allow SAX to
be a general structured-document interface, and require applications
to strip out non-XML characters when exporting an XML document?

The question is, of course, moot for XML parsers, since they will have
to report a fatal error anyway if they find non-XML characters.  It
would be interesting, though, to build an RTF parser with a SAX driver
and then hook it up to Don Park's SAXDOM.

Any thoughts?


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 ak117 at freenet.carleton.ca
Microstar Software Ltd.         dmeggins at microstar.com
      http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/dmeggins/

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