[Expat-discuss] expatj

[Karl Waclawek]

> On Mon, Apr 15, 2002 at 06:38:51PM -0400, Karl Waclawek wrote:
> >...
> > Also, it seems that Expat is more or less stagnant.
>
> If it works, then why change it? :-)

There are a few bugs.

I don't even think all of them have been formally reported.
For instance, the default handler reports a lot of DTD data
(don't remember if all or just most), even if you are handling them.
It is not supposed to do this. I had hoped I could use it to
report top level whitespace.

There is also one with regards to James Clark's test cases,
files .../valid/not-sa/003.xml and .../valid/not-sa/004.xml,
which Expat has problems with. I reported this to the list
last November. Expat does not respect this xml rule:

<XML 1.0 excerpt>
Well-formedness constraint: PEs in Internal Subset
In the internal DTD subset, parameter-entity references can occur only where markup declarations can
occur, not within markup declarations. (This does not apply to references that occur in external
parameter entities or to the external subset.)
</XML 1.0 excerpt>

That is, Expat reports an error for external parameter entities too.
IMO, this is because a child parser in Expat does not know that it
is a child parser - and therefore is processing an external entity.

> People always ask me whether I've dropped my "edna" project because I
> haven't released a version in over a year. The simple answer is that I feel
> it is "done". Expat solves its problems space, and it does it very well.
> What else is there to do?

For instance, one could add some form of stop/start functions, so that
it would be easier to implement the new pull APIs on top of Expat.
Those things have been suggested on the list.

> [ actually, we need a new release to get some bug fixes and build fixes out
>   there in usage, but still... the parser seems 'done' ]

Yep.

Karl