ANNOUNCEMENT: Proposed SAX Revisions

[James Clark]

David Megginson wrote:

> 2) there is no way to obtain contextual information (system id, line
>    number, etc.) for reporting application errors;

I have mixed feelings about this.  I think this is useful information
for some applications.  On other hand, I don't think XML parsers are
under any obligation to provide this information; it has a cost in terms
of performance and complexity and parser writers may decide that, for
their target market, it's not worth this cost.  I don't think SAX should
be impossible to implement on top of such parsers.  Also SAX is supposed
to be simple.  Adding a Location argument to every single callback is a
very significant increase in complexity.  Moreover it complicates the
use of SAX for all applications, even those (I guess the majority) that
are aren't interested in this location information. Unless a better way
can be found to do this, I don't think this functionality should be
added.

James



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