Request for Discussion: SAX 1.0 in C++

[uche.ogbuji at fourthought.com]

>  > I would really like you to reconsider this ordering of priorities.
>  > SAX2 is urgently needed for DOM implementors and developers of XSLT
>  > engines with streaming output.  You have done an admirable job of
>  > leading the SAX and SAX2 development, and it is dying without your
>  > output.  Now if you were simply buried with 9-5 work, and couldn't
>  > lend your efforts, it would be understandable.  But to detract from
>  > SAX2 in order to focus on SAX/C++, I think is muddling the
>  > priorities.
> 
> What in SAX2 is most urgently needed for DOM and XSLT?  I know that
> DOM level one *can* support some things that SAX doesn't report (such
> as comments and CDATA section boundaries), but there is nothing in DOM
> level one that says those have to be included, and I've heard of
> relatively few real-world applications that need that information.
> 
> I'm not as familiar with the situation in XSLT, and information would
> be helpful.

When I think about it more clearly, it is really the XSLT needs that stick 
out.  4XSLT uses DOM to process XSLT and uses SAX2 Alpha for output.  The 
sorts of things that need to be addressed in SAX for XSLT output include 
namespaces, Doctype declarations, and comments.  Note that 4DOM implements DOM 
Level 2 core, and thus we can support all the advanced features we need in the 
DOM, but SAX 1.0 falls short for input and output.

If we can agree on general interfaces for SAX2, the Python community can take 
care of itself and develop the Python binding.  I don't see why the much 
larger C++ community can't do its own work as well.  We should be working on 
general, language-independent interfaces for XML development and let the 
language-specific needs catch up as needed.  Reference implementations and all 
that are fine, and so I have no problem with SAX being specified in Java.

-- 
Uche Ogbuji
FourThought LLC, IT Consultants
uche.ogbuji at fourthought.com	(970)481-0805
Software engineering, project management, Intranets and Extranets
http://FourThought.com		http://OpenTechnology.org



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