SAX: 1998-04-18 pre-release (I/O)

[David Megginson]

David Brownell writes:

 > This makes it an easy call -- "throws IOException".  APIs should
 > never declare "throws Exception" except maybe in the earliest stage
 > of coming up with the exception model.  And in this case,
 > "IOException" is how any code doing I/O will already throw
 > exceptions; no need to for more.

If I did so, I would need to define the semantics of an IOException
within SAX and then require other languages to implement it exactly
the same way as Java (so that, say, a Python or C++ implementation
could throw an IOException that a Java implementation could catch).
It is not acceptable that a SAX implementation on one platform would
have to know the programming language of a SAX implementation on
another.

 > By the way, the names "ByteStream" and "CharacterStream" imply
 > they're good for writing too.  Far preferable to say "InputStream"
 > and "Reader".  I/O in languages other than Java should obey those
 > languages' rules, as (and when) the SAX models are translated to
 > them.

This is a good point, but I don't like the lack of symmetry and
transparency in "InputStream" and "Reader".  We could use something
like "ByteReader" and "CharacterReader", or "ByteInputStream" and
"CharacterInputStream" -- there are still a couple of days for
suggestions.


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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