SAX/C++: C++-specific design principles

[Daniel Veillard]

On Thu, Dec 02, 1999 at 04:32:36PM -0500, David Megginson wrote:
> Here are the principles that I applied to creating my first draft
> SAX/C++ interface:

  I'm afraid I won't be able to provide this interface in libxml
(the Gnome XML library http://xmlsoft.org/) due to the focus on C++,
though a C++ wrapper on top should be able to provide it.


> 2. Pointers never change ownership -- if a Parser (for example) wants
>    to own an InputSource, it needs to make its own copy.  The app has
>    to free everything that it allocates, and the SAX driver, likewise.

  Very good idea,

> 4. Hold my nose and use UTF-8 rather than UTF-16, for compatibility
>    with most existing C++ code.

  Like James pointed out it's hard to segregate a class of users.
UTF-8 compacteness will be appreciated by people wanting low memory
overhead when building transaction processing. UTF-16 will simplify
interfacing to DOM or using XML in UI oriented apps.

> 5. Use char * rather than string, to avoid forcing a lot of allocation 
>    overhead on the SAX driver.

I did opt for the simple approach having an xmlChar type used everywhere
except non XML content (filenames, errors messages ...). Having it 8 or
16 bits should be a compile-time (or run-time but that's more risky)
option.

Daniel

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