Announcement: SAX 1.0gamma

[Peter Murray-Rust]

Many thanks David,

At 20:46 01/05/98 -0400, David Megginson wrote:
>Implementors have requested more time to test SAX 1.0 before it
>becomes final.

FWIW this suits my timetable as well :-)

My plan is to assemble a manageable number (2-5) of Java-based parsers
under JUMBO2 on the CDROM. The present parsers I have been looking at (with
comments and queries) follow. I have listed these in public rather than
approach individual authors - I hope that's OK. The selection is pragmatic
- I can only deal with a smallish number at this stage (the CLASSPATHs,
version differences, etc. can make my operation unstable at this stage). I
also plan to use JUMBO to extract DTD information from at least one parser
so that people can browse DTD-provided information such as attribute types
and content specs. This is obviously a non-standard process at present and
will either be through subclassing the parsers to implement a further
(JUMBO-hacked) interface or simply if ... else if's.

I'd be very grateful for the authors to confirm that I have got things
right. If I have made any errors, please forgive me. The latest revision
info is taken from RobinC's http://www.sil.org/sgml/xml.html#xmlSoftware.
If there are later versions, I'd be very grateful to know what the official
position is.

Some parsers have their latest update pre-XML-V1.0. Unless I hear to the
contrary I have to assume that these are not currently XML1.0-compliant
(unless the author had a (paranormal) inside track to the spec).

AElfred:	
	Version: 			V1.1	
	Date in distribution		980309
	XML1.0-compliant		Yes
	SAX1.0pre-beta compliant	Yes
	SAX1.0beta compliant		after SAX completion + a little bit ?
	DTD-related information		Yes?
	Validating			No
DXP:	
	Version: 			V1.0beta1c 
	Date in distribution		19980410
	XML1.0-compliant		Yes
	SAX1.0pre-beta compliant	Yes
	SAX1.0beta compliant		Presumably (timescale?)
	DTD-related information		Yes?
	Validating			Yes
Lark:	
	Version: 			V1.0beta (final)
	Date in distribution		19980105
	XML1.0-compliant		No?
	SAX1.0pre-beta compliant	No
	SAX1.0beta compliant		Megginsonian SAX wrapper(?)
	DTD-related information		Yes?
	Validating			No (but Larval, codistributed, is)

XP:	
	Version: 			V0.2 (from Version.java)
	Date in distribution		19980307
	XML1.0-compliant		Yes
	SAX1.0pre-beta compliant	Yes
	SAX1.0beta compliant		RSN
	DTD-related information		Yes?
	Validating			No

These are the parsers I have worked with. They are all 100% Java and I plan
to run them under JUMBO as both applications and applets. JUMBO will
distribute a JRE for W95 and Solaris and for applets will assume a
JDK1.1-compliant browser such as Netscape 4.05 (I haven't actually tested
this - that's this afternoon's fun).

***AUTHORS***. Please correct any info here - I may well have missed later
versions. I hope that the authors' timescales and JUMBO converge and that
all 4 parsers will be available. I shall certainly wait for AElfred :-).

The other *Java* parsers on Robin's list are:

MSXML:
	Version: 			?
	Date in distribution		19971204 (RobinC)
	XML1.0-compliant		No??
	SAX1.0pre-beta compliant	No
	SAX1.0beta compliant		Megginsonian SAX wrapper(?)
	DTD-related information		?
	Validating			No?
	Pure Java			??
[PMR: I tried to install this some time ago and couldn't, but didn't give
it lots of time. Clearly lots of people *can* run it. If it's trivial to
run under (a) java (b) in an applet and there is a SAX wrapper, I might
find the time to try it out.]

IBM:
	Version: 			?
	Date in distribution		19980416 (RobinC)
	XML1.0-compliant		Yes?
	SAX1.0pre-beta compliant	?
	SAX1.0beta compliant		?
	DTD-related information		?
	Validating			Yes
	Pure Java			?

[PMR: I have no experience of this and all the information above comes from
RobinC's page. If there are plans to make it SAX-compliant and it's easy to
install I'd be interested in having a look.]

XML-by-hand (Bert Bos). Non-validating. I haven't looked further than
Robin's page.

	P.
 
Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
net connection
VSMS http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms, Virtual Hyperglossary
http://www.venus.co.uk/vhg

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