SAX2 RFD: Inheritance vs. Modification vs. Amalgamation

[Miles Sabin]

David Brownell wrote,
> David Megginson wrote,
> > 2. Add the methods to org.xml.sax.Parser, and 
> > require applications to catch NoSuchMethodException 
> > when using the new methods, in case they're 
> > concerned about what version they're dealing with.
>
> As Miles recently noted, this depends on everyone 
> upgrading to conform to the Java 2 standard.

Actually, no it doesn't. If everyone upgraded to Java 2
then by adopting my proposed mechanism we'd have a 
flawless backwards and forwards compatible migration 
path.

Given that the Java 2 requirement isn't acceptable, then
option (2) depends on us being willing to put up with
a (hopefully short) migration period during which there
will be interoperability problems with combinations of 
SAX2 clients and SAX1 parsers.

I think that's a price worth paying, given that SAX is
still quite a young API ... we should get it right
_now_ while there's still time. And getting it right
means making sure that the API is as simple and
comprehensible as possible, which is what option (2)
offers. The getProperty() mechanism should ensure that
this problem is much less likely to come up again soon.

I'm pretty sure that this is what Tim meant.

Cheers,


Miles

-- 
Miles Sabin                          Cromwell Media
Internet Systems Architect           5/6 Glenthorne Mews
+44 (0)181 410 2230                  London, W6 0LJ
msabin at cromwellmedia.co.uk           England

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